Health and Safety

Health, safety and wellbeing are embedded in our approach to business.

Zero Harm is integrated into the way we do business and forms part of our business planning cycle. The underlying principles are: people focus, government engagement, industry engagement and customer relationships.

He aha te mea nui o te ao? He tāngata, he tāngata, he tāngata.
What is the most important thing in the world?
It is the people, it is the people, it is the people

The safety of our people, contractors and the community is paramount. Our business is founded on the deeply held value of Zero Harm in all that we do.

Health and safety is managed through our robust health, environmental and safety risk management process. Our safety system is certified to ISO 45001:2018 occupational health and safety standards.

On the field, all our contracts adhere to our health and safety plans. Our control systems include:

• Crew briefing plans (CBWs), used at the start of each workday to communicate key points of the safe work method statement and discuss planned work in terms of responsibilities, safety, productivity and quality.
• Crew risk control plans and vehicle movement plans to review site hazards.
• Safe work method statements (SWMS) to identify steps, risks and controls.
• Competency assessments, ensuring all operatives are fully trained to complete their assigned tasks.
• Permit to work, which prescribes the precise way a task is to be performed and any limitations.
• Full cover personal protection equipment (PPE) worn always.
• Monitoring and regular site inspections, both scheduled and random.

Training

We use a well-established and market leading health and safety training system. The system provides our staff and subcontractors with a wide range of ways to develop skills and competencies, so they can work safely. This includes:

• Mandatory training, induction modules and safety information via a web portal.
• Role-specific competency training, and mandatory annual health and safety refresher training.
• Toolbox talks – monthly health and safety discussions designed to keep safety front of mind.
• Plant competency training to verify our workforce has the right skills and certifications.
• Site safe best practice training for safe work methods.
• Critical risk, permit to work and authority to work training and competencies.

Managing critical risk

Our embedded Zero Harm culture is underpinned by our ISO 31000:2009-compliant critical risk management programme. Together with our cardinal rules (non-negotiable safety rules), it forms the cornerstone of the implementation of our health and safety policies.

The programme covers the management and mitigation of 30 different high-risk scenarios. We train all staff to embed a critical risk approach in everyday work, through risk control and critical risk verification. We have documented procedures for permit to work and authority to work. We use downer survey to undertake critical risk audits (CRA), critical risk inspections (CRI), critical risk observations (CRO) and safe behaviour observations (SBO). Performance dashboards provide real-time geo-referenced critical risk and safety performance. This helps us identify reoccurring hazards and implement corrective actions and training.

COVID-19 response

When COVID-19 emerged in early 2020, we used our critical risk programme to understand the potential impacts of infectious disease and develop appropriate controls, audit tools (Downer Survey), training materials and resources for our people. Dashboards were also developed to provide the Leadership Team governance oversight:

• We could quickly identify the critical controls required to manage COVID-19 and develop the online tools to assist Leaders.
• Thanks to collaboration and thought leadership with industry and clients, Downer New Zealand resources and employee guides were adopted as industry standards.
• Hawkins also participated in evaluation with international companies showing leading practices in our response.

We are minimising COVID-19 transmission risk while continuing to deliver safe, reliable and high-quality services to our customers. This includes many increased cleaning services for our customers’ sites, such as public transport and community spaces, to help keep the community safe.

Our leadership teams from across the business meet regularly to put in place appropriate control strategies, which also includes complying with all Government regulations and advice in relation to COVID-19. We are also communicating regularly with our employees to keep them informed. We are committed to working closely with our customers and partners to minimise the impact on our operations while keeping our people safe.

We have in place a number of strategies to minimise the impact of COVID-19 on our people and the communities in which we operate, including increased focus on mental health support and wellbeing activities for our people and establishing a redeployment and retraining program for displaced workers.