Surrey Training Group Meeting – December 2019

On Thursday 12^th of December, we held our last Surrey Training Group meeting of the year. Welcoming new and existing members to our Training Centre at Natta head offices, the morning began with our usual networking breakfast.

Toni Gray, Group Training Officer for the Surrey Training Group, started the meeting by giving a quick introduction on the agenda of the meeting. She also covered some interesting industry news, which included CSCS card applications and funding for training.

Reducing Error and Increasing Productivity – Get It Right Initiative (GIRI)

Our guest speaker Tom Barton, Head of the Get It Right Initiative, then gave a presentation on reducing error within the workplace. Firstly, Tom explained the purpose of GIRI, and how it was created in order to improve productivity and quality in the construction sector by eliminating error, commenting, “The same mistakes are being made today as when I first started in the industry.” Tom explained that the percentage of waste that occurs in the industry from correcting errors made is an annual turnover of 21%. He then went on to discuss the factors that added up to this percentage:

• 5% – direct causes of error
• 7% – indirect causes of error
• 6% – unrecorded process waste
• 3% – latent defects

This was then followed by a flipchart activity where, after group discussions, one member from each table was encouraged to rank the cost of errors in various categories such as Steel, M&E and Groundworks. Tom gave an overview of GIRI’s 46 members (including Natta) which consists of Clients, Architects, Structural and ME Engineers, Tier One and Tier Two Contractors and many more. He explained that the company’s goal is to create a culture and working environment to ‘get it right from the start’ and be able to share knowledge about error reduction processes and systems.

After the coffee break, the meeting concluded with a general Q&A for all members of the Group. Overall, the meeting was very successful and saw a variety of companies collaborating together to offer advice and guidance on an important subject.

If you would like to attend our next meeting on March 19th 2020, or would like to become a member and receive benefits such as 10% off with our training partner, CISTC, then please contact us – call: 01252 855399 or email: info@surreytg.co.uk.