September 2009 Safety Message

Consistency in Safety

Like everything else in our business, consistency will make us a better company and if we can be consistent at safety across all our projects, we will see the results we all expect in our health & safety performance. Many of you have heard this word “consistent” many times this year. As we move forward in our business and as we take the next step we are trying to make standards and be more consistent on how we manage our business. The same applies to safety.

With many variables, different clients, different priorities, different geographical locations, different work and many other differences across all our projects, one thing must be the same, our approach to safety. No doubt this is the biggest challenge we face as we try to develop that same safety attitude and behaviour across all projects through the same shared and believed safety culture.

Consistency in safety can be promoted by learning new levels of observation for safety and how to identify and correct early warning signs. All our employees need to be performing safety audits all the time watching and correcting hazards. As a company we need to maintain a day to day heightened awareness of the right attitudes, beliefs and values that lead to behavioural change and modified risk behaviours across all projects. We need to plan for our safety globally, within the project and most importantly from day to day. Safety is a people-intensive endeavour and therefore people handling skills must be improved for improvements in safety performance. We must also increase the level of our ownership or personal responsibility for safety. We need everyone to “buy” into the program making it their own. This will help intensify the concept of being accountable for one’s actions. No doubt our leadership role is one of the most critical factors for consistency in safety. All our leaders must accept the responsibility that comes with managing safety on the job. And finally the individual personal commitment towards safety must be the same for everyone in order to achieve the level of consistency we expect in safety.

Over the past years we have proven to the industry we can deliver strong successful projects consistently and only one doubt remains, “Can we deliver SAFE projects consistently”? The same question was asked of me as recent as two weeks ago by a client’s representative.