Safety is more than a priority. It’s a value.
Looking at safety with a "new set of eyes."
"The last thing I want to do is call my wife up or not make it back home because of something that I did here, which looking back at, I could have avoided doing.
If you view safety as a value, that value’s incorporated in every aspect of your life.
It’s like a new set of eyes in which you look at things differently than you used to.
Those same set of eyes can keep you safe here, can keep your fellow employees safe, and keep your family safe.
Because when you go home with those same set of eyes, you look at things a little bit differently."
Roland Rodriguez, INC Tech, Bridgeport
Our safety
Zero injuries by 2015 is our target, and top-of-mind safety for everyone is our goal.
Our approach to safety includes:
- Establishing clear goals, and monitoring performance
- Working and living a zero-injury culture
- Promoting healthy and balanced lifestyles
- Proactively identifying and managing health, safety and environment-related risks within operations, maintenance and construction activities
- Complying with all applicable laws and regulatory requirements
- Continuous review and improvement of the policy
- Aligning our contractors with company policy
2012 Safety Performance
We want every single person who works in our facilities, on our construction sites, and in our offices across North America to return home every day with zero injuries. At Capital Power, "zero" means everything - and everyone. That's why our reporting goes above-and-beyond industry standards, and our metrics now include injuries involving contractors working on our sites and in our facilities.
The impact of our commitment to achieving a zero-injury culture began taking hold in 2012. There were fewer employee injuries compared to 2011, and our safety performance exceeded targets in all but one location. We missed our overall safety target, however, due to the disappointing safety performance of our wind-project contractors. We have learned from these incidents, and changes have been made to our policies and procedures for working with contractors.
Although safety performance on construction projects improved late in the year, our 2012 safety record was worse than our target of 1.05 for Total Recordable Injury Frequency (TRIF). The actual TRIF was 1.45.
We are striving for a ‘zero injury’ workplace for everyone. A total of 26 individuals, 18 contractors and eight employees were injured seriously enough that they required medical attention in 2012. Four of the eight employee incidents resulted in lost time, for a total of 156 lost days. The number of lost-time injuries declined in 2012 compared to 2011. In addition to fewer lost-time incidents, the severity of injuries was less than the previous year, resulting in fewer days lost to injuries.
Working, learning, growing
We implemented more than 20 safety lessons from our wind construction projects, and preventative solutions are in place at the Port Dover & Nanticoke Wind Project currently in construction. Our improvements fell into four categories:
- Standardization of contractor, subcontractor and site health and safety personnel pre-qualifications
- Improved communication of expectations, roles and responsibilities
- Formal processes for tracking non-conformances
- Stipulation of specific contract requirements
Safety improvements implemented
Safety initiatives in 2012 that contributed to our improved performance in the second half of 2012 include:
- World Class Safety workshops were held at the majority of our facilities, involving employees at all levels of the organization.
- Safety Improvement Plans were implemented at all facilities and for the Construction and Engineering group.
- Implementation of the Contractor Pre-Qualification Standard and the corresponding use of ISNetworld as the measurement tool for contractor performance. These tools together continue to give us a better understanding of the risks associated with using certain contractors and implementing solid risk-mitigation plans when needing to use higher-risk contractors.
- We continued the executive inspection program and members of the executive team conducted site visits and inspections in 2012. Our executives engage with our employees where they work, and this helps us to better understand the challenges and risks at our worksites.