Smooth Sailing
Veolia Water North America has taken its safety to the next level through training and a focus on areas of concern.
Veolia Water North America, the
nation’s largest services provider
for municipal and industrial
water and wastewater systems and
facilities, takes safety very seriously. Our company
understands not only the impact safety
has on our bottom line, but also its impact on
our employees’ morale and ability to go home
to their families the way they left them. From
2000 to 2005, the organization saw its safety
performance level off with little or no improvement,
year over year.
In 2005, our company had a recordable
incidence rate of 6.2 and a lost-time incidence
rate of 1.4. At that time, both of these were
better than the Bureau of Labor Statistics
(BLS) averages for the industry, but Veolia’s
leadership wanted more. The main challenges
included sustaining worker and workplace
safety at a heightened level at all times, improving
on accident reduction, and closing
the gap between the numbers of accidents occurring
at industrial sites and those at municipal
operations.
Veolia Water North America designs,
builds, operates, and manages various types
of facilities, programs, and systems, such as
water and wastewater treatment and reclamation
facilities, water distribution systems,
wastewater collection systems, groundwater
remediation systems, residuals and composting
facilities and related distribution programs,
and combined sewer overflow facilities.
The company employs some 2,700
people and works with more than 270 municipal
and industrial customers.
Incident Reporting
and Accountability
With a desire to boost the organization’s
safety performance, management set aggressive
targets for the 2006 calendar year.
The targets were put in place knowing that
it would take a lot of effort and dedication
in order to achieve them.
Senior and regional managers did more
than talk about safety; they made people accountable
for working safely and were passionate
about it. Targets were set for the organization
with continuous improvement
milestones for each geographical region of
the company or operating unit and target-setting
for area managers with direct oversight
of assigned projects.
Key senior and regional management
personnel (up to and including the president
and CEO) now receive an automated Immediate
Notification Report (INR) via email
within 24 hours after an injury, vehicle
accident, or environmental incident has occurred.
This INR, which is an output of Veolia’s
proprietary, Web-based data management
software, is a condensed report that
summarizes the incident location, case type,
and who was involved.
This has been a critical component of our
organization’s success because it has forced
anyone who was on the fence about safety and
compliance to move to the right side. Knowing
the CEO is following up on almost every
incident report tells employees that the only
way to avoid the spotlight is to work safely and
encourage those around them to work safely,
as well. Moreover, the INR is designed to make
sure all incidents get prompt and appropriate
resources to best manage or mitigate the event.
Each incident that occurs at Veolia is entered
into the online database. It serves to
document incident investigations, complete
with who, what, when, and where; root cause
identification; corrective and preventive actions;
and assignments for responsible parties.
In addition to all of its inherent monitoring,
tracking, and reporting capabilities,
this program complies with federal OSHA
recordkeeping requirements.
Reporting and tracking alone did not
allow us to achieve our targets. Our team of
Environmental Health, Safety & Security professionals
developed a list of key challenges
that were hindering the safety performance of
the organization. For each challenge, we came
up with a solution to ensure we would reduce
work-related injuries and illnesses and, as a
result, achieve the aggressive targets set by our
company’s leadership.
We have developed an annual training
calendar and complete this training at sites
across the country through a combination of
in-house subject matter experts, e-learning
modules, contractors and vendors, and
monthly safety packets produced and posted
on the EHS&S section of our intranet site. Allison
Brigitzer, a member of the EHS&S staff,
compiles and organizes the training materials,
with each training topic including a PowerPoint
® presentation complete with speaker
notes, handouts, and quizzes. Providing people
with everything they need to execute the
training increases the likelihood that the
training is executed, we’ve found, and this is
yet another example of the corporate staff
providing the tools for success and those in
the field being successful.
This article originally appeared in the July 2008 issue of Occupational Health & Safety.