AS a company that carries out the majority of its projects and services in high-risk environments, Babcock’s ongoing safety accolades prove that it does not pay lip service to safety, and that every employee in the organisation matters.
In 2018 Babcock’s commitment to safety earned the company a Health and Safety award in the SEIFSA (Steel and Engineering Industries Federation of South Africa) Awards for Excellence. The award acknowledged Babcock’s Ntuthuko Engineering business for reaching 1 793 888 man-hours worked with zero lost-time incidents on a high-risk half-station shutdown project at a local power station. The immensely risky project involved the concurrent overhaul of three boiler units at a power station in the Free State, with an average of 700 people per boiler working above and below each other at height, in dark and constrained areas.
At the end of 2019, Babcock recorded a zero disabling injury incident rate (DIIR) across all its business units, with six million hours worked over the previous 12 months without a lost-time injury.
Babcock’s Ntuthuko Engineering business achieved an exceptional 15,5 million safe man-hours worked on various sites for 33 months, from August 2017 to April 2020.
“All our major construction sites, as well as our fabrication facilities, achieved more than 1 000 days without a lost-time injury, with one of our sites recording more than 4.7 million hours without a lost-time injury – a world class safety performance,” says Welma Prinsloo, Managing Director at Babcock Ntuthuko Engineering.
The business unit’s General Manager SHERQ, Mpho Matshane, says that this is an unheard of achievement for a business that is operational in a very high-risk construction environment, and that relies on a workforce where at least 90% of the man-hours are worked by contingent labour resources, some of whom have never been exposed to high safety standards or high-risk environments.
“This, together with other challenges such as managing 11 different languages, cultural diversities and stress factors, made Babcock’s safety achievement all the more significant,” says Matshane.
She attributes this exceptional safety milestone to leadership visibility and responsibility contributing towards a well-entrenched safety culture. “The safety culture at Babcock is owned by the leadership within the organisation; leaders that make themselves visible, show a passion for safety and have a positive attitude that is contagious across the whole business unit.”
