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'The reporting of Near Miss Incidents provides...invaluable free lessons and improvement opportunities...'
Message from the Vice President Safety
- Barry Formosa
Vice President Safety
Regrettably and despite all of our efforts three colleagues were fatally injured at our operations in 2005/06. We recognise that we will not be truly successful until we completely eliminate fatalities from our operations, and this remains our key immediate objective.
The 2005/06 Total Recordable Injury Frequency Rate (TRIFR) was 8.7 which was the same result as the previous year, while the Classified Injury Frequency rate (CIFR) increased from 3.9 to 4.8, in part due to a range of acquisitions and divestments made during 2005/06. Encouragingly, the Duration Rate, which measures the impact of injuries on people by the number of days people are away from their unrestricted duties per injury, improved by 28 per cent.
A key activity during the year was providing support and assistance for the successful integration of the former WMC assets into the BHP Billiton safety system. The institutionalising of our Fatal Risk Control Protocols (FRCPs) continued throughout the Company and was reinforced with the provision of guidelines for each of the ten FRCPs. The FRCP facilitators appointed at the end of the previous year have also proved to be invaluable to assets in supporting the understanding and implementation of the FRCPs.
We commenced monitoring TRIFR as our primary lag indicator during the year. This broader indicator includes all medical treatment and restricted work day cases thus enabling a greater focus on the types of injuries occurring in the workplace. We conducted measurement and analysis of safety performance in our three key regions of Australasia, Africa/Europe and the Americas. This data provided greater insight and perspective on the cultural issues impacting safety performance.
At the end of the reporting period, we established our Global Safety Network. The network is made of representatives from all of our assets and is a key mechanism for the sharing and learning of safety related information across the organisation. The immediate objectives of the network is to harness the organisation’s enthusiasm for Zero Harm and facilitate more efficient sharing of leading practices and engagement of contractors. A key focus of our safety management systems is working closely with our contractors to ensure their safety approach and management systems align with ours. In 2006 contractors represented 64 per cent of our total workforce. During the year we conducted forums in Australia and South America where CEOs of our contract partners joined us to discuss our safety approach and how we can work together to drive improvement. A similar forum is also planned for southern Africa in late 2006.
During the year we also continued the encouragement and recognition to individuals and sites of the benefits of high Near Miss reporting as a key leading measure for the prevention of injuries and fatalities. As a result there was an unprecedented increase in reporting – almost three times more than the previous financial year. This yielded 1,840 Near Miss Incidents, which are categorised under the FRCPs and provides invaluable free lessons and improvement opportunities. To assist with the effective and efficient sharing of these learnings, Repeat Incident Alerts and Zero Barrier Alerts were circulated regularly throughout the organisation.
A revised BHP Billiton Leadership model, in development for the past 18 months, was finalised at the end of the reporting year. The core of the model is based on eight well established safety leadership dimensions and four leadership styles. The model will provide the opportunity to fully integrate and align what we know is essential for successful safety leadership into:
- Our recruitment processes
- Our leadership development Initiatives, and
- Our measures of safety culture and safety leadership.
A key focus in 2007 will be the integration and rollout of this model across the organisation.
Recognition and reward form an important element of any successful safety program. This year we have introduced the Safety Excellence Awards to recognise overall sites that have excelled in safety. Each CSG President will award a President’s Excellence Award and a President’s Most Improved Award. This two-tiered approach recognises and encourages those mature sites to continue improving, and those requiring improvement to accelerate their efforts. Recipients are then considered for the CEO’s Excellence Award for the Overall Site of Safety Excellence in BHP Billiton and the CEO’s Most Improved Award for the site that has demonstrated the most improvement in performance and maturity across the Company. The Presidents Award recipients are listed in the Safety>Our Performance section of this report.
In closing, I would like to recognise the effort and commitment of our people to improve the safety performance and culture of BHP Billiton. We remain confident that the approach and strategies in place are the right ones. Our focus remains on supporting the understanding and execution of these in all of our operations globally.
Barry Formosa
Vice President Safety
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