At a glance

  • Sector. Civil engineering, groundworks, lifting and plant operations, haulage
  • Client size. Owner-managed contractor with its own plant fleet and haulage department, working on leisure, healthcare, port, heritage and housing sites across England
  • Services used. Health and safety audit, policy and manual development, COSHH and risk assessment libraries, construction phase plans and RAMS, compliance programme design and monitoring
  • Engagement. Three-year retained agreement from January 2025, moved to a maintenance model from February 2026
  • Headline result. Nil significant findings across all 16 specific hazard areas at the 2026 annual audit

The client

The contractor delivers excavation, drainage, concrete and civils packages for principal contractors and end clients nationwide, with crane and plant operations, welding and a haulage fleet run from its Lincolnshire base. It holds an ISO 9001, 14001 and 45001 integrated management system and tenders regularly for public and private sector work.

The challenge

The company had parted ways with its previous external adviser and wanted a fresh look at its arrangements. D3's initial audit in late 2024 found strong site-level practice but gaps in the framework behind it. There was no fire risk assessment, evacuation procedure or fire warden cover at the home site. Directors and senior managers had not completed health and safety training matched to their responsibilities. There was no competence assessment process for subcontractors and no formal new-starter induction. Documentation sat on an old adviser's templates. For a business winning work through tenders, the lack of verifiable compliance evidence was as much a commercial risk as a safety one.

What D3 did

  • Audited the operation and delivered a prioritised action plan, then walked the directors through it item by item at a follow-up meeting
  • Rebuilt the health and safety manual on a company-specific template, with libraries of generic risk assessments and COSHH assessments for every activity and substance in use
  • Reviewed every existing policy against current legislation and wrote nine new ones to close the gaps
  • Produced construction phase plans, RAMS and full site files for individual projects, from hospital and port works to holiday park infrastructure, plus a dedicated concrete works manual
  • Designed an Internal Compliance and Audit Programme covering six areas (HSE, quality, data protection, equality and diversity, contractor due diligence and CSR), with a compliance dashboard, weekly compliance packs reviewed independently by D3, a monthly review meeting and a just culture approach to non-conformance
  • Mapped the programme clause by clause to ISO 9001, 14001 and 45001 so it doubles as the internal audit evidence for the integrated management system

The results

  • The January 2026 annual audit recorded nil significant findings across all 16 specific hazard areas, including excavations, lifting, plant, work at height, confined spaces, noise, vibration and temporary works
  • Contractor competence assessment, permit to work, inductions and incident investigation are now embedded and evidenced
  • Compliance performance is tracked monthly on a dashboard and reported into ISO management review, giving the company tender-ready evidence on demand
  • The programme matured to the point where, from February 2026, D3 moved from hands-on implementation to a maintenance and assurance role at a lower monthly fee, with the client's own team running the system

What this means for you

If your business has outgrown a folder of borrowed templates and your clients are asking for proof rather than promises, a structured compliance programme gives you both the safety and the evidence. D3 builds it with you, then hands it over.