The Challenge

With an on-the-ground maintenance team numbering in the thousands spread nationwide the Health and Safety Executive team for the client were looking for ways to improve their already good safety scores. The client had a clear idea of what they wanted to achieve, but they didn’t know where to begin; they weren’t even sure what the problem was or which part of the challenge to address first. We agreed with the client that a 5-day Design Sprint would be the best approach for their challenge. During the planning sessions for the Design Sprint, it became clear that day one was going to be crucial to the success of the week as it was evident that the various levels and departments weren’t aligned on what the crux of the issue was. By the end of day 1, we had a clear problem space to work on and alignment among the different stakeholders on the key challenges the organisation faced regarding HSE compliance.

The Outcome

By the end of the Design Sprint week, the team had prototyped and tested two ideas and had already begun planning how they could carry them forward to be implemented company-wide.

Key Insights

The key to this project's success was getting the various stakeholders' alignment as they all had conflicting perspectives of the challenge. Bringing them together helped them realise that each department had different priorities that sometimes took precedence over health and safety. Outlining and understanding these priorities and conflicts helped the team to develop greater empathy for each others’ needs and thus create solutions that took them into account.