World Safety Day 2022, that takes place today (April 28th), gives us an opportunity to reflect on the work we’ve done to date and the future of safety in the Rail sector. To find out more, Shane McEntee, our Senior Health, Safety and Sustainability Manager for Rail at Amey gave us an insight into the programmes and innovations they’ve implemented to keep their people safe.
“As many people will be aware there are risks associated with every job we undertake from facilities management to highways construction, waste collection to bridge inspections – working in the Rail sector I know too well the potential hazards and risks our people face on a daily basis. However, with risk brings opportunity and it’s my role to ensure that our people are aware of the risks, asses the risks and have the correct equipment tools and working environment for them to carry out their job safely.
“It’s a job that I’ve been doing for over twenty years and one that has given me to the freedom to introduce new ways of working to further enhance the safety structures we have in place.
“At Amey we follow the principles of Zero Code – this is a simple behavioural framework that empowers people to stop and shout out if something doesn’t feel right. Zero Code is made up of four areas of focus Kitted Out, Ready to Go, Stick to the Plan and Stay Alert. This set of guiding principles in 2021 helped the Amey business achieve 97% of its daily operations incident free and a reduction in reported incidents by a third. We are aware that this good, but for us to meet our zero-harm ambition, there is more I believe, we can challenge ourselves in delivering.
Knowledge drives awareness and ownership
“In 2022 we’ve been shifting the focus on to fostering a culture of care, moving from rules to relationships, removing risk and ensuring our safety and wellbeing processes help our people to deliver safe operations every day.
“In our Rail business we found that communication was an area of improvement - we needed to create a platform that allowed our teams to share health, safety, environment and wellbeing lessons learnt and best practices. Working in collaboration with our Rail National Safety Action Group, we created Amey Foresight - an online space that focusses on 14 identified risk categories. These risk categories were identified in consultation with our teams on the ground. There are also sections on Predict and Prevent as well as Close Call analysis and templates for teams to share their learnings that are directly linked back to the principles of Zero Code.
“This platform has seen over thousands of page impressions since it launched last year. Having Foresight hosted on SharePoint makes access to all Rail employees possible as well as enabling us to capture interactions with the page and pull off analytics that we can review to continually improve.