Company Announcement - WorleyParsons RSA has undertaken a serious commitment towards an environment of Zero Harm on all their projects following the introduction of a number of incident reduction strategies in 2013, which have reduced the frequency of incident rates by more than 70% over the last two years. The company accredits this outstanding achievement to its Serious About Zero campaign and associated programmes, such as the Safety Leadership Programme and Good to Go, which are designed to encourage managers to start conversations on all levels that reinforce safe behaviours, discuss the inclusion of safety in the design of work assets, systems and processes, and challenge personnel and contractors on unsafe acts or conditions.  These programmes are unique to WorleyParsons and were developed and tested by the company in Australia, before being rolled out in South Africa and subsequently the rest of Africa.   

Deployment of projects such as the Safety Leadership Programme and G2G, among others, has resulted in better risk management, better quality and cost management and has provided for broader contractor acceptance as well as providing improved results for contractors.  These successful outcomes have reinforced WorleyParsons RSA’s commitment to meeting its legal and moral obligations of keeping its people and the environment safe and creating and fostering a positive HSE culture.   

“Every person that is not injured is a win,” says Luc Herwin, HSE manager for WorleyParsons RSA.  “Our Safety Leadership Programme is about much more than just safety. It also gives leaders the tools to deal with all the different angles of safety.” Herwin adds that the knock-on effect of the Safety Leadership Programme is the narrowing of the disconnect between senior managers and the operating conditions on site, allowing management to better understand the challenging conditions that on-site personnel are faced with.  The programme operates on a point system, encouraging leaders to build up their points and to actively engage in on-site safety. 

Good to Go is another new programme that WorleyParsons RSA has introduced in their ongoing pursuit towards attaining better alignment between customer, project teams and contractors, with respect to the vision for HSE performance on the project, the leadership actions and KPI targets to which the project will commit in order to achieve this vision.  Herwin explains that the G2G programme involves the personal engagement of CEOs, middle management, supervisors and all staff from project pre-tender stage right through to in-field activities, and is also a first of its kind in the South African mining industry. 

He adds that this leadership alignment and early contractor engagement programme is tailored towards each customer’s specific needs and dovetails with their existing HSE culture and systems. WorleyParsons RSA has already successfully rolled out a number of G2G programmes and received overwhelmingly positive feedback from their customers. The company maintains that the early alignment of the project team and contractors around this vision of superior safety, health and environmental practices has been shown to deliver the required results.

‘”Delivering what we promise” to the customer is an ethos that underlines WorleyParsons’ core operating principle of good communication that stems from a strong commitment up front to work together.  Deeper and more honest conversations about capability lead to good working arrangements based on partnership and accountability, and result in more flexible project capability, and better planning and management of emergency and adverse conditions, ultimately providing improved results for contractors.

“There is no proprietorship on safety,” concludes Herwin, adding that WorleyParsons RSA will continue to set a strong expectation around behaving safely, including recognition of, and intervention against, unsafe acts and unsafe conditions that will help the company to achieve its goal of ‘Zero Harm’.