To Print: Click here or Select File and then Print from your browser's menu

This page was printed from http://annualreport.bluescopesteel.com

RECORD LOW INJURY PERFORMANCE

Our employees and contractors achieved an outstanding safety performance during 2002/03, recording a Lost Time Injury Frequency Rate (LTIFR) of 1.8 (a 36 per cent reduction from the preceding year) - see Figure 1.

This compares with the current New South Wales "all manufacturing" average LTIFR of 25. Our total number of LTIs for the year was 54.

The Medical Treatment Injury Frequency Rate decreased to 9.1 (24 per cent fewer than last year) - see Figure 2.

As shown in Figure 3, in 2002/03, 88 per cent of employees were involved in conducting monthly safety audits, against a target of 75 per cent. Many teams have every person involved in conducting monthly audits.

Importantly, there were no fatalities at our operations during the period. Zero fatalities have been recorded in five out of the last six years.

In 1992/93, our business recorded five fatalities and had an LTIFR in excess of 30, compared to this year's figures of zero (see Figure 4) and 1.8. The cornerstone of this improvement has been our self-auditing process, which involves employees in hazard identification and risk management processes.

OUR OH&S MANAGEMENT SYSTEM

Much of the improvement in our safety performance reflects our ongoing emphasis on demonstrating commitment to safety at all levels across the Company. The commitment in Our Bond that our people will work in a safe and satisfying environment is backed by a comprehensive Occupational Health and Safety (OH&S) Management System, which is mandatory in all our operations.

The Management System focuses on three basic aspects: safe people, safe systems and safe plant.

Under the System, 23 Safety Management Standards have been established. Each business is required to demonstrate that the management systems in use at its operations comply with the performance requirements of these Standards. This is done through a combination of compliance statements based on self-assessments and a hierarchically structured audit program.

During 2002/03 the self-assessment process showed a much improved performance for the majority of the Management Standards.

We have increasingly adopted risk management practices to identify, assess and mitigate operational safety and health risks at our facilities. These include the implementation of risk registers at each operation, the support of key risk networks, and major hazard facility management.

Sites have also focused on addressing behavioural aspects of safety. These include involving employees in safety behavioural audits, devising corrective actions following incidents and near misses, and monitoring to ensure the actions are implemented.

A standard technique for the investigation of significant incidents and near misses - the Incident Cause Analysis Method (ICAM) - is in place. ICAM supports initiatives to communicate and share the lessons learned about the root causes and contributory factors in significant incidents and near misses. In 2002/03, over 13,000 near miss incidents were reported.