UV U SEE - A Pablo Initiative

The construction industry makes up 8% of the UK workforce, but accounts for 44% of occupational melanoma deaths. There's no regulatory requirement in the UK to give construction workers any form of skin protection, despite melanoma cases rising 147% since the early 1990s to become the UK's fifth most common cancer. One number gave us somewhere to aim: 86% of melanoma cases are preventable.

So, entirely self-funded and with no client brief behind it, we set out to build the fix into the one thing every construction worker already has to wear: the hi-vis vest. We created a specially formulated silicone logo, heat-sealed onto the vest itself, that shifts from white to pink to red as UV intensity rises. Sold at cost, it added less than £1.20 to the price of a vest, and we paired it with branded SPF dispensers on site, so the warning and the fix worked as one system.

We launched in May 2025, timed to Melanoma Awareness Month, and picked up 35 million in reach across national broadcast and press without a penny of paid media. Trials with major contractors followed within weeks; after six, 89% of workers had changed their behaviour, seeking shade or applying SPF where they hadn't before. The Considerate Constructors Scheme, the industry's preeminent regulator, then built UV-U-SEE into its new gold standard accreditation, a change that reaches 96% of the UK's top contractors.