HSE at OMPA
Our Group QHSE Manager, Dylan Stewart, sheds some light on how OMPA promotes HSE in the workplace.
OMPA is a people business, this means people are at the heart of everything we do, we put them first. Or goal is for everyone to work safely together, with zero injuries, and to go home safely to their family and friends.
As part of our QHSE Policy we strive to continually improve in everything we do, especially on all things HSE.
How do we do this?
Through strong leadership, working with good people, and a continually improving safety culture.
So, what is a Safety Culture?
A Safety Culture can be defined as ‘the way things are done around here’, from our contractors offshore, to our employees in the office, it includes everyone, we are One Team, striving for a common goal.
For example, a good safety culture is when everyone is looking out for each other, sometimes we switch off due to loss of focus, possibly lack of sleep, or a distraction due to family life back home, this can lead to mistakes and injury or worse, so we rely on our workmates to keep us safe.
A poor safety culture could be when we see something or someone working unsafely, and we don’t say anything to them, we walk by. This could result in them hurting themselves or others. So we always encourage everyone to say something.
Site Standards
We help our Contractors stay safe by reinforcing our Site Standards, as follows:
- Gravity
- Body Mechanics
- Mechanical
- Thermal
- Pressure
- Sound
- Electrical
- Radiation
- Human Factors
- SIMOPS
These Site Standards are discussed every day during the daily Toolbox Talk. Our Toolbox Talks are facilitated in a coaching style by asking questions. The reason for this is to encourage participation by all, because when we ask questions we do two things 1) we raise awareness (we get people thinking and actually looking around), and 2) we instil responsibility / ownership. Nobody likes to be told, we prefer to be asked, and hence this is our ethos, and is a big part of the success of our safety culture.
The standards are discussed, and questions are asked how they apply to our job today, and what we are doing to manage them, and keep everyone safe.
We also promote awareness of our site standards during the induction phase and have signs and reminders throughout the worksite.
Behavioural Standards
We have behavioural standards to keep everyone safe, we use “I will” statements to reinforce commitment, for example…
I will…
- Treat others how I want to be treated (with care and respect)
- Keep my worksite clean and tidy
- Encourage my team to speak up and share ideas
- Challenge others when work is not being done safely
- Kindly accept feedback from others
- Support anyone who stops work for safety reasons
- Investigate incidents to find out the root cause and avoid blame
- Set a good example
- Praise safe behaviour
- Always hold the handrail
A Proactive Approach
We strongly believe in a Proactive Approach to safety, where we encourage things such as open and honest conversations, inclusive toolbox talks, near miss reporting, safety improvement suggestions, dynamic risk assessment, training and professional development, emergency drills, and above all, Stop the Job authority.
Stop the Job authority is something we focus on with our Contractors, especially during the project induction, and it’s a message that is reinforced by our Managing Director, Rob Grimmond, who also believes ‘no job is so important that it can’t be done safely’. The message to our people is clear, if something doesn’t look or feel right, then let’s hear about it.
Our onshore HSE team is always on call to support any offshore HSE related matters, they have our full support.
Of course once any job is complete we always have our feedback session and lessons learned meeting with our team. This way we can celebrate the wins, capture improvements for the next time, no matter how small, and hence, our continually improving safety culture thrives.