Fatal Risks
The safety of our employees and the communities in which we operate is integral to our business. Our goal is Zero Harm.
Despite implementation of safety standards and systems being mandatory at our operations, significant incidents and, in some instances, fatal accidents continue to occur. This is a cause of major concern to us, and we are totally committed to eliminating these incidents from our businesses.
Our challenge is to fully implement and optimise the safety management standards we have developed. We need to ensure that all our employees and contractors understand, apply rigorously, and fully comply with these standards.
Refer to the following sections on:
- details on Our approach to this challenge
- an understanding of Our drivers.
Our approach
Across the organisation we manage safety risks through our risk-based HSEC Management Standards (PDF 284KB) and other dedicated safety systems.
Our safety strategy is based on three principles:
- leadership effectiveness
- behaviours and awareness
- rigorous standards and systems for managing risks and ensuring full compliance.
These all focus on our people and systems, with two key objectives:
- ensuring that our practices, procedures, conditions, equipment and behaviour all contribute towards creating a workplace where it is possible to work without adverse impact on people, the environment or the community
- developing our people to make the right decisions as they go about their day-to-day work.
Since April 2003, a suite of activities with the potential for causing fatalities has been identified, documented and formalised in Fatal Risk Control Protocols, a key component of our safety strategy. Implementation of the Protocols at all our operations is to be completed by 30 June 2005.
Workshops to review implementation of the Protocols have been held in Australia, South Africa and South America. The gathered information will guide us towards improving the contents of the Protocols, creating clear understanding of the requirements and assisting operations that express concerns with their full implementation by the due date.
The tracking of the Fatal Risk Control Protocols audit results is key to ensuring that any identified at-risk practice is discontinued.
However, analyses of past safety performance in the operations are not adequate indicators of future performance. For this reason, new leading indicators are being developed.
These will consider the effect of increased activity on the overall risk profile of an operation. The indicators may show that an operation may need to address certain safety requirements, despite having an historically good safety performance.
Following one of our recent fatal accidents, our Chief Executive Officer, Chip Goodyear, sent a message to all staff, which included the following: ‘Each one of us must take ownership of safety. We know the types of activities that injure and kill people and we have procedures to deal with these risks. Yet, in certain cases, these appear to have been ignored. Often we think we are doing the right thing by moving fast and not following our safe work-practices fully. We are not. Stop and think about risks associated with the task at hand and stop any action that you believe may not be safe before someone is injured or killed. We simply must do this. It is the best way to maximise our long-term performance.’
Our drivers
We recognise that our employees and contractors have a right to a safe work environment and that they have families and dependants whose lives can be devastated by losing a loved one. As well as doing the right thing by our workforce, our mission of achieving Zero Harm is simply good business. We need to be able to attract and retain talented people to work with us, and good people are attracted by high standards and performance.
To obtain and maintain a licence to operate, we must be seen by our host communities as a company that protects and cares for its people. We must also be able to continue operating within increasingly stringent regulatory frameworks.
In financial terms we are a very successful organisation, but until we eliminate fatalities from our operations we will not achieve our objective of being the best company. We recognise that it is the best companies that people want to welcome into their communities and work with, buy from and invest in.
Feedback
Site Map
Privacy Policy
Terms & Conditions