Builder's Hero: Ian Whittingham

A safe pair of hands

An accident that left brave Ian Whittingham in a wheelchair led the former roofer to devote his life to the safety of others in the building trades.

Ian, now 40, slipped on some asbestos and fell 25 feet on a building site 15 years ago, leaving him paralysed.

Yet Ian says the tragedy made him vow to do everything he could to improve health and safety in the construction industry.

Says Ian: “I was extremely unlucky that day, and the accident had a huge impact on my life. However, it has led me to do the work I do now and I feel like I’m making a big difference.”

Ian, from the Wirral, has spent the past ten years working tirelessly with construction companies to promote health and safety in the workplace giving talks, providing training courses and running seminars.

“Not nearly enough construction workers take health and safety seriously, but through speaking directly to people at all levels, I aim to contribute to a decrease in accidents and fatalities. 

“It’s all about common sense and following some basic rules. “The key to improving health and safety is communication between workers. I work to educate people in the importance of thinking carefully about decisions they make on-site”

Education

And Ian, who has been awarded an MBE for his services to health and safety in the building trade and is a ConstructionSkills accredited Health & Safety trainer, reckons his work has paid off.

He says: “I remember it made a real difference to one group of workers when they were using scaffolding and another man says he was inspired to go into the safety area by a talk I’d given.”

Ian believes the health and safety issue is so vital that a lot of the work he has done is voluntary and adds: “It’s invaluable to a company to put all its employees on a health and safety course as it could prevent accidents and potentially save lives, which is why being able to speak about my experience is so important.”