How does CONIAC operate?
The Working Groups are the principal means for delivering practical outcomes in support of CONIAC’s purpose and work plan. Members of Working Groups are volunteers from across a wide range of construction stakeholder organisations.
CONIAC oversees four working groups (WGs):
- Tackling ill Health WG - highlighting and tackling the costs of work-related ill health
- Managing Risk Well WG - simplifying risk management and helping business to grow
- Keeping Pace With Change WG - anticipating and tackling new health and safety challenges
- Supporting Small Employers WG - giving small construction businesses simple advice so that they know what they must do
CONIAC’S Acting Together Steering Group (ATSG) provides leadership, direction, and accountability for the delivery of the objectives of all working groups, in particular:
- In helping to determine how CONIAC can promote broader ownership of health and safety and worker engagement across the industry.
- Ensuring that broader ownership of health and safety and worker engagement is implicit in the work of all CONIAC WGs
- Advising HSE and stakeholders of emerging health and safety issues in the construction industry and collectively sets a direction and plan for mitigation and/or remediation.
- Agreeing WG plans to ensure that their individual objectives are relevant, valid, evidence based and align to wider HSE and construction industry strategy.
- Reporting the activities and performance of CONIAC to the HSE Board.
HSE’s Construction Sector provide CONIAC’S secretariat and HSE’s Chief Inspector of Construction is the Chair. ATSG meetings take place four times each calendar year. Every three years CONIAC is subject to a reconstitution exercise, as set out in the committee’s terms of reference. CONIAC’s ATSG monitors progress with activities and holds each WG to account for delivery of outputs specified in their work plans.
The Construction Industry Advisory Network (CONIAN) is the wider industry stakeholder network associated with CONIAC. CONIAN is the primary means by which CONIAC connects with the wider industry. Network members include construction related stakeholders or organisations that have the capability, capacity, and willingness to support the ATSG and WGs in delivering their objectives. CONIAC’s WGs are active in creating and developing new health & safety initiatives to promote through CONIAN to the wider industry.
Working Well Together (WWT) is a well-established and respected initiative driven by a network of regional groups throughout Great Britain. WWT is the primary means by which CONIAC and HSE engage with the hard-to-reach audience of SMEs, self-employed contractors, and other micro-businesses in the construction industry. CONIAC established WWT in 1998 in recognition that the construction industry itself needed to do more to improve its health and safety performance – particularly among the smaller construction businesses.
The Asbestos Network (AN) is a forum of key stakeholders that work together in a constructive way to promote best standards and practice in relation to control and work with asbestos. The network aims to promote measures that will bring about a reduction in the level of asbestos related diseases and publishes guidance material concerning work with asbestos. The AN workplan takes forward the HSE strategy in this area. The AN is accountable to CONIAC.
