Dear Colleagues
The safety of our employees, sub-contractors and others working on our sites is of utmost importance to me and the management of the Murray & Roberts Power & Water Platform.
We believe that Zero Harm is possible, and commit towards achieving this goal. While we have made steady progress in improving our safety performance, we will continue to implement innovative safety programmes as we strive towards achieving our Zero Harm aspiration.
The Murray & Roberts Group has an annual Safety Stand Down at all projects, to raise awareness and share ideas on how to further improve safety. This is a very important event and I urge everyone to participate in the activities planned for the Stand Down on your site.
The focus area for the 2016 Safety Stand Down is “Critical Controls”, which are those actions which prevent major incidents which have the potential to cause a fatality or very serious injury from occurring or escalating. These Critical Controls should be identified through the risk assessment procedures. It is absolutely essential, if we are to avoid major incidents in the future, that we all check and verify that that these Critical Controls are in place prior to work commencing – and if not the affected task should be suspended until the necessary control is implemented.
In addition to the above, I would also like to highlight the importance of the following three issues in establishing a positive safety culture:
Accountability requires that we all take responsibility for our actions. This includes the responsibility to work safely; and management has the responsibility to take action fairly against people on our sites not behaving safely - but also to train employees and recognise good performance.
Personal Commitment by both leaders and employees, which requires a sincere, unwavering and visible commitment to safety.
Operational Discipline which requires that everybody consistently carries out tasks the right way every time, in terms of the correct procedures and standards.
I believe that the successful implementation of Critical Controls, Accountability, Personal Commitment and Operational Discipline will result in a significant improvement in our safety performance. During your Safety Stand Down you will learn more about these matters. Management will be giving them all the necessary attention over the next few months.
My safety goal in the new financial year is for the Power & Water Platform to have zero injuries and we all go home every day to our families safe. I call upon your support and commitment in achieving this goal.
I thank you for participating positively in the Safety Stand Down, and for embracing our safety vision of Together to Zero Harm!
Kind regards
Steve Harrison