When Davey Aird went to work on 22 March 2021, the 59 year-old husband and father had no idea it was to be his last shift. Just after lunch, Aird became unwell and collapsed. Tragically, he died of a massive heart attack, despite the best efforts of his work colleagues and the paramedics. 

Shocked by the sudden death, his brother John started a government petition to have defibrillators in every construction site office to assist, should this ever happen again. This petition quickly gained more than 66,000 signatures, but fell short of the required 100,000 for the matter to be considered for debate in Parliament.

The problem, as I see it, with government petitions is that even if you reach the magic number of 100,000 signatures, there’s little guarantee that it will go any further than a parliamentary debate. Any petition will not have a chance of becoming law with unless the government opts to add it to its legislative programme; a fairly unlikely outcome.

We, as tradespeople, know how vitally important this issue is, and therefore we must lead from the front if we want this to happen. We should not need government to act when defibrillators are a perfectly easy thing for employers to purchase, install, and operate. 

We are professionals, we know the dangers, and we should have the tools in place to help retain great tradespeople and loved ones. A defibrillator is an easy to use and easy to maintain piece of equipment that almost anyone can operate without training. 

Demonstrating the scale of the issue, The British Heart Foundation says that in the UK there are as many as 100,000 hospital admissions each year due to heart attacks – that is one every five minutes. 

More concerning, however, is that, in the UK, there are over 30,000 out-of-hospital cardiac arrests, with a less than one in 10 chance of survival.

I have spoken to many construction directors and those in the health, safety, and management side of the industry, and simply asked: “Can you possibly look to fit these on your site?” The response has so far been encouraging. Several major players in the central belt of Scotland have put this issue on their radar. 

Morrison Construction/Galliford Try has been as a responsible employer in that respect for a few years now. When opening a large site, the company places a defibrillator on-site. 

They then register that machine with the NHS, so that if anyone in the area (not just the site) has a heart attack and they call 999, the NHS will direct them to the site’s machine for community use. Once the job is complete, these machines are donated to the community or finished build. 

Many of their site managers also carry the machines, and all their first aiders are trained in their use. This also ties in with their status on the Considerate Constructors scheme. 

Davey and John are well known to many in the central belt, having expertly trained and supervised many in the plumbing and heating trade, and hold the respect of many. Deaths such as Davey’s are potentially avoidable with the right equipment in place. As John said when he started the petition: “A [machine] might not have saved my brother’s life, but it would have given him a better chance.”

I, therefore, implore every director, health and safety professional, and every site supervisor and manager, as well as the HSE and the Considerate Constructors Scheme, to consider fitting these vital pieces of equipment in their site offices across the country, and help ensure that everyone on the site gets home at the end of the day.