New Colour-Coded System for Safety Helmets in Construction

The reign of the yellow hard hat on the UK’s highways and construction sites has come to an end. Leading construction industry body ‘BuildUK’, which represents contractors and trade associations, has devised a new safety helmet colour scheme.

Whilst Network Rail has its own specific requirements regarding safety helmet colours (white for general use or blue for inexperienced people and visitors) there are currently a number of different approaches to safety helmet colours in construction. This inconsistent approach is confusing and potentially dangerous, so the safety helmet colour scheme has been created in order to help reduce the dangers on construction sites, as people of different experience levels would be easier to distinguish.

New Safety Helmet Colour Scheme

• Black: Site Supervisors.
• Orange: Slinger/Signaller.
• Blue: Inexperienced Person / Visitor – Issue will be determined following an assessment of an individual’s experience at site induction. Applies to all including suppliers, clients and others.
• White: General Use (Including sites where colour coding impractical), Manager, Client, Competent Operative.

Highways England is also implementing the scheme as part of its ‘Raising the Bar’ health and safety initiative. With a view to achieving a common safety helmet colour standard to realise the following benefits:

• A single standard that can be adopted by all Highways England construction and maintenance contractors. At present contractors specify different requirements on helmets as there is no industry-agreed standard.
• More clearly identifying a person's role through helmet colour which indicates the level of responsibility on-site. It fosters pride in the wearing of a specific hat colour as a badge of responsibility.
• Reduced costs as companies will no longer have to buy different coloured helmets for different jobs.

Highways England construction and maintenance sites that adopt a helmet colour code for specific roles have been following the new safety helmet colour scheme since 1 January 2017. On smaller sites a safety helmet colour standard may be impractical, in these cases, it is advised that you use a default colour of white as a general current practice. All safety helmets must meet British Standard BS EN 397.

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