Scoring high

In 2009, Carillion scored 8.3 out of 10.00 in the Corporate Health and Safety Performance Index (CHaSPI) which is sponsored by the Health and Safety Executive. Continuing our trend of yearon- year improvements, this was 0.3 points higher than in 2008 and 1.6 points higher than the industry average.

 

Four out of five Carillion projects have achieved 12 months or more without any RIDDOR reportable accidents.

 

 

 

In 2009, Carillion became the first of Network Rail’s major contractors to achieve a rolling accident frequency rate of zero. This means Carillion’s rail business achieved 12 months without a RIDDOR reportable accident.

 

 

 

 

 

In 2009, Carillion MENA won the Build Safe UAE Award for best practice in safety at the Construction Week Awards and Carillion Caribbean won the Trinidad and Tobago Occupational Safety and Health Authority award for Outstanding Contribution to the Development of Health and Safety in Trinidad.

 

 

 

Each year we support the British Occupational Health Research Foundation (BOHRF)

“Support for BOHRF research on health of people at work is one of several ways in which Carillion ‘walks the talk’ rather than taking the easy option of just ‘talking the talk’.

Brian Kazer, Chief Executive, British Occupational Health Research Foundation

 

Health and safety

Being the recognised leader in the delivery of health and safety is one of our key performance indicators. Safeguarding the lives of our people and the wider public is our number one priority.

Health and safety management

With Richard Howson, Executive Director, holding Group-wide responsibility for health and safety, our commitment to the highest standards of health and safety starts at the uppermost level of our business. Monthly reports are submitted to the Board, which rigorously monitors our performance and sets targets for improvement.

To achieve our objective of being the recognised industry leader in the delivery of health and safety, we provide training for all our employees on health and safety issues and maintain high levels of awareness through ongoing programmes, which are described on the following pages. In 2009, we rolled out a new training course on health and safety offences. This made employees aware of the legal consequences which individuals can face if health and safety law is breached and, as importantly, reminded them how to achieve compliance by behaving safely and adhering to our systems. As part of our annual Great Debate employee feedback process, we ask our people whether they agree with the statement ‘Health and safety is Carillion’s top priority’. In 2009, 85% agreed with the statement, compared with 83% in 2008. While this shows there is still room for improvement, we are pleased that this score has improved every year since 2006 and remains the highest response in the survey.

All our businesses have formal health and safety management systems in line with the OHSAS 18001 standard, with those in the UK and our Middle East North Africa region being independently accredited to OHSAS 18001. Our management systems include a robust Group-wide policy as well as a clear communication and training framework. All projects are assessed for health and safety risks at each stage: design, delivery and use.

In the UK, we implemented a new accident and incident reporting system during 2009. All health, safety and environmental accidents and incidents are now reported via telephone and logged centrally. Daily reports are then issued and details of serious incidents are sent to line managers by SMS text. This ensures that accidents or unsafe acts are tracked closely and followed up promptly.

Target Zero

Our corporate objective, known as Target Zero, is to eliminate all reportable accidents. This demanding objective requires the constant vigilance of everyone in Carillion, along with their commitment to consistently adopt safe working practices. We support this objective with a wide range of tools including training, audits, Don’t Walk By (our hazard reporting programme), workforce Safety Action Groups, strong visible leadership (such as regular Directors’ safety tours) and worker engagement activities.

We are pleased that four out of every five of our projects have now had 12 months or more without a RIDDOR reportable accident (those that must be reported under the Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations). As Jason Rowley, Group Health and Safety Director, states, “We have to keep getting better because accidents still happen. Each and every day we work, on each and every project and contract, we will aim to have no accidents. If an accident does occur, we will learn from it and improve for the future, and we will again target zero the next day.”

Behaving Safely

Supporting Target Zero is our Behaving Safely campaign. It sets out the behaviours that will help us to improve safety, since policies and procedures alone are insufficient to achieve our target of zero accidents. Importantly, it also identifies those behaviours that are unhelpful. Specific behaviours have been identified for managers, supervisors and all employees. The key themes of Behaving Safely are following rules, speaking up, being aware and getting involved.

Getting our workforce involved in managing risk is an essential component of our health and safety strategy. We prosper in a culture where employees are not just listened to, but proactively engaged in telling us about hazards, risks and better ways of doing things. As well as their involvement in local Safety Action Groups, we hold regular planned work stoppages, giving employees time to look around and report, or act on, things which are not as they should be.

The stoppages are also an opportunity to ask employees about the behaviours they see among managers, supervisors and other people working on their site. From this feedback, a profile has been developed of how the behaviours of managers, supervisors and others are perceived by the workforce, and it is being used to encourage helpful behaviours and eliminate unhelpful ones.

AC2E

Standing for awareness, competence, compliance and excellence, AC2E is our model for assessing our safety systems and behaviours against a standard of excellence. Awareness includes policy, communication, responsibility and hazard identification. Competence includes training, behaviour and risk management. Compliance includes management systems, incident investigation, performance measurement and supply chain management. Excellence includes innovative practices, influencing stakeholders and health and wellbeing.

By using the AC2E framework, our business units can assess the maturity of their systems and identify targets that need to be met to move towards excellence. Across the Group, we achieved an AC2E score of 56.4% in 2009, against our target of 56.9% (compared to 46.6% in 2008).

Health and wellbeing programmes

Carillion’s health and wellbeing programmes support our employees and help our business to run smoothly through reduced absence. They include:

• > an employee assistance programme that offers services such as education advice, childcare guidance and counselling to employees in need, free of charge
• > our work–life balance policies that provide the flexibility for employees to manage their lives in less stressful ways through, for example, parental leave, part-time working and special leave
• > a healthcare contract which provides a health surveillance programme, 24-hour medication advice and other services, all at no cost
• > a working group that communicates to all our people on pandemic flu, initiated by the 2009 outbreak of swine flu
• > our flexible benefits scheme, which enables employees to buy extra days’ holiday as part of their benefits package.

Performance and recognition

In 2009, the Group’s Accident Frequency Rate (AFR) was 0.13 reportable accidents per 100,000 people hours worked (2008 AFR: 0.14), with four out of five operational sites, worldwide, achieving ‘Target Zero’. The improvement we achieved in 2009, on an already relatively low accident rate in 2008, reflected our continuing and rigorous focus on reducing reportable accidents to zero. It is particularly pleasing to note that in 2009 the accident rates in our construction businesses in the UK and the Middle East reduced by around 40%.

We deeply regret that in 2009 there was one fatal accident in which Kenneth Campbell, a Carillion employee at a quarry in Scotland, was fatally injured when the vehicle he was driving overturned on the quarry haul road. No other vehicle was involved. Every accident is a personal tragedy and our thoughts are very much with the family and friends of Mr Campbell.

Two prosecutions of Carillion companies by the Health and Safety Executive were completed in 2009. One of these related to an accident that occurred in the former Alfred McAlpine business, before it was acquired by Carillion, and this prosecution gave rise to a fine of £40,000. The second related to an accident in which two people died during rail work at Hednesford, Staffordshire, in 2004. It resulted in a fine of £444,444, plus £50,000 costs. Network Rail and three individuals were also fined.