Our Distribution business is committed to improving health and safety performance. Each area of the business sets targets and initiatives locally to deliver improved performance in line with overall business objectives.

 

Health and safety strategy

As part of our plan to improve health and safety, each year our Distribution Business sets improvement plans and key performance indicators at all levels to help achieve even higher standards. During 2003, the business out performed its main safety target, which focuses on our total recordable injury rate, and continued to implement a range of initiatives.  

Initiatives in 2003

• 'Safety Watch', a hazard and near-hit reporting system, lets staff help reduce hazards and the possibility of accidents occurring in future.
• The Distribution business works with its external service providers to make sure consistent standards of safety, health and environmental management are met. These standards are also included in the tender process for any product or service. We have also set up a number of safety and environmental key performance indicators as part of our contracts with our main service providers and we include their performance in our overall target reports.
• We commissioned an audit of our safety management system against the OHSAS 18001 standard. The results were very good and in 2003 we started dealing with the small number of actions recommended by the audit.
• Each year, the Distribution business runs a competition in which each site is judged on its overall safety, health and environment management and performance. In 2003 the competition was opened up to include our main external service providers for the first time.
• Our 2003 Safety, Health and Environment Conference focused on our new 'Wellbeing' strategy. Held each year for all managers, safety and environmental representatives and health liaison officers, the conference spelled out how we will deal with the three issues together, rather than separately as before.
• We believe understanding employee behaviour can significantly improve results and three years ago adopted an employee-focused behavioural improvement programme, 'Safety in Mind'. We set up a two-day training programme to help employees understand the role they play in their own safety and that of their colleagues. This was followed by a series of workshops run by Safety in Mind 'champions' and the ideas that came out of them are now being considered.
• We set up a Safety, Health and Environment Forum between employees and External Service Providers in all our businesses to air concerns and share information on initiatives to help spread best practice.
• We established 'CableSafe' to help and guide third-party contractors undertaking work near our underground electricity cable network. CableSafe consists of four liaison officers who advise and train in order to reduce cable damages and therefore the number of accidents, some of them fatal, which were happening in our area.
• We finished putting in place a 'pole-choke' system so our staff can permanently attach themselves when working on wood poles. We have also set up a working group to look at the increased use of mobile elevated work platforms (MEWPs) for our staff in 2004 and beyond.
• An internal working group has been set up to ensure our approach to working at height includes the latest industry guidance.
• During the year we successfully carried out initial trials of a desk-top driver assessment tool that will let us target where additional driver training and support is needed in 2004.

 

Performance in 2003

The 2003 target for Total Recordable Injury Rate (TRIR) was 1.0. The target was set considering the activities of both staff and external service providers (ESPs). We exceeded the target significantly, achieving a TRIR of 0.83. During 2003, 25 injuries resulted in time being lost from work. Of these, three involved our own staff and 22 involved ESPs. Whilst this regrettable, it represents a decrease of seven compared with 2002 and, through our ongoing safety improvement plans, we aim to reduce this further in future. During the year we received 1,331 Safety Watch forms, identifying potential hazards and reporting near hits. This exceeded our target of 800 and last year's total of 1,059. Safety Watch has been established for a number of years now and both the number and quality of forms received has steadily grown. All Safety Watch forms submitted are acknowledged, investigated and acted upon to rectify the identified problems whenever possible.