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Workplace safety
The company’s goal is “Nobody Gets Hurt.” The philosophy is straightforward and simple – creating a workplace free of all occupational injuries and illnesses. To help meet this commitment, our OIMS framework provides a robust management system for addressing safety, health, environment and related security requirements.
Active employee and contractor involvement is critical to achieving safety and health objectives. Workers participate in safety teams and contribute to incident investigations and ongoing improvements to safety procedures. Our commitment to safety is led by senior management and is supported throughout the organization, involving all employees and contractors.
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Safety performance
Our company’s long-term trend in safety performance continued to be strong, remaining among the best in industry. However, the number of injuries increased in 2006.
The total recordable incident frequency for employees rose to 0.35 incidents (work-related injuries or illnesses per 200,000 hours worked) from 0.20 in 2005, and for contractors to 0.99 from 0.71 in 2005. The lost-time incident frequency for employees remained relatively unchanged at 0.02, but increased for contractors to 0.11 from 0.01 in 2005. There were no employee or contractor fatalities during the year.
There were many areas of our operations where excellent results were achieved:
> Strathcona refinery employees achieved nine years with no lost-time incidents
> Dartmouth refinery employees and contractors achieved over six years with no lost-time incidents and had no recordable injuries during 2006
> Nanticoke refinery employees achieved over three years with no recordable incidents
> Our ultra-low sulphur diesel fuel project achieved 3.2 million hours of work without a lost-time incident
> Our Cold Lake projects unit achieved one of its best years for contractor safety performance with a total recordable incident frequency rate of 0.36
To address the increase in incident frequency rates for employees and contractors, a number of initiatives are underway:
| Leadership
Sustaining a strong commitment to safety starts with leadership by management. In 2006, managers and supervisors increased the use of on-site job observations that involve acknowledging safe work performance and identifying improvements. There were also regular safety “stand downs” in our operations, where work was temporarily halted to allow management to engage workers on safety issues.
Office safety
Office-based injuries accounted for about 30 percent of total recordable employee safety incidents during the year. Repetitive strain injuries were of particular concern, accounting for most office-related cases. Our company has responded by reinforcing the use of OIMS for Offices, a series of training materials and ergonomic tools designed to help employees identify hazards that can exist in the office and actions they can take to work safely.
Contractor safety
During 2006, the injury rate for contractors continued to be higher than for employees, with over three times more contractor injuries than employee injuries in our operations. A number of measures to improve performance are underway:
> Contractor safety leadership teams, comprising senior managers, are reviewing and providing clear direction to safety initiatives and performance across the organization.
> All major sites have implemented a system that teams up company supervisors with contractor supervisors to improve safety performance on the job site.
> We enhanced an evaluation process to measure the safety proficiency of contractor supervisors working on our sites. Driver safety
Driving in the course of work represents one of the higher-risk activities for some employees. Accordingly, we have formal driver training programs to maintain high levels of road safety. All frequent drivers receive defensive driving training when they join the company and then update training every three years.
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