Expanding work safety ethos

A willingness to apply the same safety focus to its community as it does to its labour force has netted the Bay of Plenty’s division of Fulton Hogan a top spot at the New Zealand Community Safety and Injury Prevention Awards.

The awards are supported by ACC and were held in Wellington last month at the start of ACC’s Safety NZ Week. Fulton Hogan won the category for ‘Outstanding business or organisation that is contributing to the greater well-being of its own workforce and the community in general’.

The contracting company is part of Tauranga’s City Partnership Programme and  became involved with Tauranga’s bid to achieve the World Health Organisation’s Safe City designation. Tauranga became New Zealand’s seventh Safe Community last month.

It’s believed Fulton Hogan’s involvement is the first time in the history of the international programme that a private company has been involved in something that’s usually driven by public organisations.

Bay of Plenty Fulton Hogan’s Keith Campbell said the company was “chuffed” to learn that and is very proud to have been involved in the programme.

“It’s a great fit with our own ethos of safety and community input. We all live in Tauranga and have families here, so it made sense for us to support something that made the community we live in safer. Also, our business primarily comes from local authorities, so we wanted to be a good corporate citizen and do something that would support our community.”

Campbell said safety is a “number one priority” for Fulton Hogan, and that focus is paying off as work injuries drop. “We employ about 4000 staff across the company, and over the past year we’ve had only 25 injuries where the person had to take time off. Locally we’ve only had one time lost injury in over 550,000 hours worked in the past 12 months. That’s taken a lot of hard work, but it’s been worth it.”

 As its contributions to Tauranga’s Safe City accreditation, Fulton Hogan part-funded the co-ordinator’s salary and sat on the steering committee. The company and its employees also took part in the White Ribbon campaign as advocates for non violence against women, and raised funds during the Heart Stopper Challenge for Heart Children New Zealand.

Fulton Hogan has also financially supported both the Bay of Plenty and Omanu Surf Clubs for the past 18 years.

For its own workers it’s provided annual medicals that also assess workers’ lifestyle, paid for Quit Smoking programmes, nutritional programmes and weight loss competitions for staff, and Sunsmart programmes. It’s also supported after-hours sports teams, along with other special events that focus on fitness, such as the Oxfam 100km walk and local triathlons.

Dr Carolyn Coggan, director of the Safe Communities Foundation NZ and the Awards’ chief judge congratulated the company.

“Fulton Hogan encourages its staff to contribute positively to their communities. Fulton Hogan is clearly an excellent corporate citizen and has worked very hard to make Tauranga and the Bay of Plenty a safe place to live and work, especially through its valuable contribution to the WHO Safe Community designation.”

Fletcher Construction was highly commended at the national safety awards for its comprehensive approach to health and safety on and off the job.

Fletchers highly commended

Fletcher Construction entered the awards in the section for ‘Outstanding business or organisation that is contributing to the greater well-being of its own workforce and the community in general’. For the awards the company highlighted the health and safety work it has undertaken as it carries out the $160 million Harbour Link upgrade in Tauranga.

The Harbour Link – Stage 2 project includes building a new harbour bridge, a viaduct, widening various roadways and the existing harbour bridge, and improving pedestrian and cycle routes.

“As a team and as a company, health and safety is a top priority for us – it has to be,” states Mark Taylor, Fletcher Construction’s health and safety co-ordinator for the project. “We’ve got 150 permanent workers working close to every possible hazard, even over water and under a flight path for the airport, so we put a lot of time and effort into creating a safety culture amongst our workers.

“A lot of our construction involves working at heights so we’ve run a long campaign about fall protection and height safety training – and it’s worked. Since our ‘Safe Working at Height’ campaign, we’ve had no major height incidents for 15 months, not even a near miss,” he says.

The workers on the project are also part of an international trial of a hand-arm vibration monitor. The monitor attaches to each tool a worker uses, picking up the cumulative effect of tools’ vibrations. Once the vibrations tally to a specified maximum, the monitor lights up red telling the operator to stop. This protects the worker from potentially harmful levels of vibration.

The company’s submission also included several other safety measures that have been devised by the workers themselves. For example, one worker designed a truck lifting device that uses a swinging davit to do heavy lifting. Another worker devised a demountable gas storage cage to house potentially dangerous gases at the building site.

Taylor says he’s particularly proud of these innovations. “The worker-generated initiatives are really pleasing to see because it shows we have a strong safety culture working all the way through the organisation.”