Ingenuity-Winter-2017

14 Pond | www.pondco.com P ond recognizes the importance of focusing on proactive health and safety actions as a key performance metric to preventing all injuries and accidents. This, as well as encouraging relationship development, mandating individual accountability, and reinforcing overall team commitment are the building blocks for the evolution of a sustainable workplace culture of safety interdependence. This is also a cost effective way to engage all employees in a sustainable safety approach to hazard elimination and control, in a manner that drives overall organizational performance excellence to include delivering a quality product that provides for adequate and safe access, as well as ease of operation, maintainability and serviceability. Proactive safety actions have nowbecome a client requirement withinmany industries, and a common selection criteria for many opportunities. The following is a list of such actions: „ „ Health and Safety Plan Development „ „ Project health and safety reviews „ „ Sharing stories and lessons learned „ „ Employee empowerment „ „ Stop work authority „ „ Hazard recognition and control „ „ Employee positive recognition programs „ „ Predicting and recognizing changing site conditions „ „ Employee training „ „ Starting meetings with a safety story „ „ Establishing zero mishap goals at the individual, project, office and overall organizational levels „ „ Subcontractor due diligence reviews „ „ New employee orientation, training and mentorship „ „ Incident Intervention Billions of dollars are spent each year as the result of workplace injuries and accidents. Associated direct and indirect costs include loss of work time, equipment repair, and curtailed production, as well as costs associated with regulatory investigations, fines and legal actions. These injuries and accidents can be prevented by focusing on proactive safety actions, with Employee Empowerment (EE) being one of the most effective actions. EE includes expanded employee engagement in all work tasks, safety by design, maintaining a positive attitude with “out of the box” ideas, and stop work authority. The EE prog r am has f i ve bas i c components: 1 Pre-Work Planning 2 Activity Hazard Analysis and Controls (hazards, administrative, personal protective equipment [PPE], strategies) 3 Lessons-Learned Application 4 Personal Responsibility at all Levels 5 Management Involvement Pre-Work Planning Pre-work planning involves the following components: „ „ New employee education and participation „ „ Employee training and establishing work expectations „ „ Organization „ „ Vision elements and expected outcomes New Employee Education and Participation The first component of the EE program is the implementation of a buddy system. All employees who have been with the company for 12 months or less are assigned a mentor who oversees their activities, ensuring the new employee develops safe work habits, improves natural skills, leverages their strengths, and does not complete a task in a way that will harm someone or the environment. Careful thought to forming such pairings is crucial: if employees with conflicting personalities are paired together, the result may be corrosive rather than positive. Employee Training and Establishing Work Expectations It is extremely important for employees to have previously received training in the tasks to which they are assigned. Although training can be a never-ending list depending on the organization and/ or regulatory requirements, the most important aspect of training is that it be current and task-specific, including emergency response actions. Each employee is expected to plan their respective work task(s) to eliminate or mitigate adverse effects to self, others, and the environment. Concurrently, management must develop positive Proactive Safety Actions to Eliminate Workplace Injuries HEALTH AND SAFETY BY DESIGN