Victoria is Hi-Level’s Safety, Health, Environmental and Quality Co-ordinator. She has been with the company eight years and is pivotal to ensuring we live up to our highest standards in everything we do. She began with a quality remit, has expanded her focus to include health and safety, and believes in continual professional development to increase her skills – and our reputation. She recently completed a IOSH Managing Safely course
When you have 50 people on site, working for clients such as Amazon or one of the UK’s biggest sports retailers, keeping everyone safe has to be a top priority.
That’s where Victoria’s expertise come in.
She ensures that all our installers are trained, certified and insured, carries out due diligence on new suppliers to check they have the requisite certifications … in fact, she makes sure that from our raw materials to a finished mezzanine, everything is exactly right.
“No one steps on site unless I have their name and qualifications recorded in our system,” she says.
We view health and safety site inspections as a positive and have received excellent feedback from our clients. It was really rewarding when one client told us they’d improved their own health and safety performance after following the example set by the Hi-Level team.
When she carries out risk assessments Victoria is motivated not just by the monetary cost and reputational damage that a bad accident would bring, but by a passionate belief that everyone working at Hi-Level should be able to do their job and go home safely at the end of every day.
Health and safety is just part of her job, however.
She is responsible for all our ISO certifications – for Quality, Environmental Standards and Occupational Health and Safety. These are not legally required but they provide validation from external auditors, and are proof of Hi-Level’s commitment to achieving high standards across all our work.
A natural for the job
Victoria joined Hi-Level in 2014 just as a change in the law required mezzanine floors to be CE marked. Our ISO:9001 Quality certification was a superb foundation for the CE application and Victoria was able to write a watertight case. She arrived in July and we were accredited by November!
She is a natural for her job: “I’m a control freak and I want everything done properly. It’s not a case of A to Z, but A to B to C … and I love lists. If Hi-Level has been operating so successfully for 30 years it’s because we do things the right way.”
Her daily tasks include checking fire exits, building walkarounds, updating audit files for each job and gathering environmental data to measure our gas and electricity usage with a view to reducing our carbon footprint. She also calculates how much CO2 our fleet of electric Teslas have saved.
She ensures that every project has its required CE mark (and the post-Brexit UK CA designation) and writes a declaration of performance for each project.
Projects can be challenging – such as the airport installation with enhanced security checks needed for the Hi-Level team working airside; or the complex plant hire, driver and delivery certifications required for one of our biggest contracts.
But when there’s a problem to be overcome, we are hugely grateful we have Victoria on the team!
Hi-Level Mezzanines provides mezzanine floors of the highest quality in the industry, yet remaining competitively priced thanks to the expertise of our team of qualified structural engineers, innovative digital design process and advanced solutions.
For 30 years we have been creating space for amazing things to happen. Contact us today for more information at sales@hi-level.co.uk or call 01730 237 190.
