The Missing Skill in Global Telecoms: Why Sales Teams & Solution Architects Need Health & Safety Awareness Training Now

Last year, I was embarrassed!

There I was trying to train some of the best Telecom’s programme and project managers (PM’s) on the planet, but I was getting it wrong.

But why?

By this stage, Pro Safety Management had trained hundreds of telecoms project managers and senior leaders. Sure, I couldn’t trigger a whole team to almost hate me?

What word or term had I used?

That term was pricing in safety in the bid process.

And that’s exactly what the majority of project delivery teams DON’T get involved with.

This falls to those cool cat sales teams and those very switched-on solutions architects.

So was I barking up the wrong tree?

Does the delivery team ever get asked to support pricing new opportunities, like national or global deployments of private networks?

In my simple brain, I was thinking:

• Incorporate safety management into the bids → Helps avoid or manage delivery risks = Better cost control, safer global delivery and quality improvements.

The reality is that everyone understands this concept, but it comes down to who owns the accountability to make sure safety is baked into new proposals.

Now don’t rush out and blame the sales team.

Why?

Because I’ve had first-hand experience of sales training!

Often sales is more about understanding the WANTS and NEEDS of customers. In the digital space right now that could be bidding, buying or funding these exciting projects:

• Data centre construction at massive scale
• Edge networks
• Fibre expansion
• Private networks for industrial clients
• Enterprise private mobile networks
• Smart cities & infrastructure projects
• Satellite‑integrated connectivity
• Post‑merger integration and national rollouts
• Subsea and Long‑haul Fibre

And often clients don’t know how health and safety management and compliance fits into their WANTS and NEEDS.

That’s why sales teams need basic skills in asking the right questions to understand if a project or contract involves construction work. More importantly if the work involves managing high-risk or complex activities.

But here’s the thing!

Reputable customers do expect safety to be managed, but often they don’t see telecoms projects as construction works or high risk.

But even installing a Wi-Fi router in steelworks does have its challenges and means installation engineers.

I can think of two risks such as asbestos exposure and falls from height.

The real problem is that customers often hold all the pre-construction information on such risks as asbestos, permitted or restricted areas that can add cost to deployment or as-built drawings that could help identify the best cable routes.

But are the sales teams the only important stakeholder when bidding for work?

NO!

Solutions architects often help the sales teams define the solution such as where equipment is installed, equipment specifications, key features and timelines. In effect they are a designer who can influence deployment risks. So, they too need health and safety awareness training to make sure safety is baked into the final bid/ proposal.

Finally, it’s also important to involve a professional health and safety manager to complete a final check to ensure that sales and solutions have considered basic H&S controls. If the work is complex and high risk, then this would be the point of escalation to build in serious H&S controls that may increase bid costs into the £100,000+ but save £500k in hidden costs.

Let’s now look in more detail the gaps with sales and solutions and how you can take this back into your organisation to plug your own gaps: