Brand Zero

Some go even further - for example, the Beyond Zero programme boldly announces on its webpage  

But when this is unpacked, several different understandings of zero in this context can be suggested. Firstly,. .. better that that could simply be shifting the scope and challenge of zero beyond health and safety to include other areas of management practice -a bundling up of the non-productive (as explored and discussed in Chapter 6). And in this instance, Beyond Zero does include 

Alternatively,. .. better than that could suggest achieving zero incidents is an easy target. This reading was also identifiable elsewhere on the page  

Aiming for zero accidents was a soft target and was not the final word in what could be achieved. 

Zero is arguably belittled beyond itself positioned as soft, something so easily attainable that it should not be considered a target, just something to be looked beyond. When considered within the context of one of the highest risk industries in the UK (Health and Safety Executive 2014), this appears to be rather empty rhetoric. 

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But such hollow rhetoric is often an inherent part of Brand Zero -to make bold claims, to set the bar ridiculously high, to make commitments and pledges and promises that are signed up to by smiling executives in sharp suits and very, very clean PPE. It has become a victim of its own hype the proclamation of zero alone is now suggested to assure organisational success and the very employment and use of Brand Zero has become equal in merit to any actual reduction in accidents, incidents or harm. Yet such proclamations of what can and will be achieved often fall short when considered within current industry contexts, and Brand Zero tries to position itself in practice. 

The corporate iconography of Brand Zero does not simply cascade down onto the construction sites of the UK unchanged and unchallenged the world does not work like that. In fact, significant variation can be found when Brand Zero is actually talked about on site shared understandings shifting within the hierarchical positions in terms of their relationships with safety and practice. 

At the site level, amongst operatives. Brand Zero loses its corporate glamour and becomes just another part of everyday site life ... 

In his explanation of a particular Brand Zero programme, this subcontractor s operative simply positions the programme as relevant to all work practice. Safety has become an inherent aspect of work - arguably the ideal - although this work and the responsibility for safety has been assigned to the more abstract you rather than the I of the speaker himself. But Brand Zero is not referenced in any particular way, the target or number is not seen to be of relevance, zero has simply become a tag for the more relevant - to this operative - realm of safe practice. 

Even when Brand Zero programmes are specifically considered, zero is not a relevant number ... 

As Brand Zero becomes more prominent it also becomes more complex, as managers and supervisors on site struggle to implement its stark numerical goal with the realities in which they work every day. 

Indeed, the more abstract zero of the workforce can also be found amongst the managers and supervisors, who often try to position the numbers and targets within their own lived experiences and understandings of safety on sites. For example, to consider Brand Zero as ... 

This may be in part reflective of the safety culture programme language of Brand Zero (the engagement approach as explored in Chapter 7), but it also moves away from the numbers, and instead moves back to safety and how safety works on sites, far more har-monistic with the workforces own ways of understanding. 

The supervisor now develops something but this again makes no recourse to the incident in terms of practice or people, rather it is constructed with direct reference to the impact on the target of zero, and belittled, considered stupid. Whilst the safety incident is positioned as a negative event, it is only considered as negative through its direct association with Brand Zero. 

It can be suggested that a consequence of this focus on Brand Zero has produced a depersonalisation of health and safety management. Within a project or organisational context, one individual alone is not able to prevent all accidents it requires shared practice if only because of the logistical and physical demands of the site. Yet under Brand Zero, this shared focus can be easily affected by others, and so responsibility for success resides within the shared workplace, which in turn can lead to individual disassociation with health and safety management at a personal level. Just one incident can therefore ruin the figures and potentially disenchant those who should still be focused on safety management in practice. 

But the rejection of a tangible achievement of zero in practice found on sites is in sharp contrast to the corporate Brand Zero, which very clearly sets target zero amongst a variety of temporal and numerical parameters. It is the application of measurement to zero that makes it something tangibly achievable, either the ultimate... 

So whilst corporate Brand Zero operates within a controllable and manageable site context, where specified practices could be easily implemented to support the achievement of zero, operatives struggle the clinical, clean zero and the complex, confused site environment is not easily reconciled within the context of everyday practice. Whilst zero is deceptively simple, people are simply complicated, and the practice of work on site is highly influential in the construction of a reality of unsafety, in which zero remains a number that can never be attained. 

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