Baulderstone tops 1m hours safety record at Mt St John

Baulderstone is celebrating the second major safety milestone for the Townsville Wastewater Upgrade Program at Mt St John, Queensland, clocking up 1 million hours free of lost time injury (LTI). The project team and its subcontractors have maintained its commitment to a safe working environment after reaching 500,000 hours in December last year.

The team’s major focus was to instil the company’s Safety Matters message in all workers, said Baulderstone North Queensland Regional Manager Gary Butler. “We have seen potential accidents on site and have changed our practices so that these were averted in the future,” he said. “All subcontractors and Baulderstone employees have adhered to our safety policy not only to maintain their own safety, but the safety of their workmates.

“The team is thrilled to have reached the 1 million-hour mark without an LTI at Mt St John. This proves that our safety initiatives have worked.” Baulderstone has exceeded industry safety standards over the past five years on Townsville projects, with zero hours lost to injury. According to the Queensland Major Contractors Association, the LTI frequency rate for its members was 1.75 hours in 2009. This brings Baulderstone’s total LTI free hours to 1.5 million across five of Baulderstone’s Townsville projects: the RAAF Base Townsville Multi Role Helicopter Facilities, Lavarack Barracks Townsville Enhanced Land Facility - Stage 1, Stockland North Shore, Townsville Women’s Prison and the Australian Institute of Marine Science’s (AIMS) Tropical Marine Research Facilities.

Butler said the outstanding safety results at Mt St John and other Townsville projects were in line with the Queensland Government’s Zero Harm at Work Leadership Program. “Through our Safety Matters initiative and the state government’s zero harm leadership campaigns, we have worked hard to increase awareness of safety hazards in the workplace,” Green said.

“The wastewater upgrade is one of the biggest public infrastructure projects in Townsville in recent years and it is a great achievement for everyone involved to reach the 1 million hours injury-free milestone,” said Mayor Cr Les Tyrell. “The result reinforces the council’s approach to set extremely high standards for workplace, health and safety on all of our projects and Baulderstone has done a terrific job.”

Safe Work Australia’s most recent statistics show that the cost of work-related injury and disease to the community is $57.5bn.

Baulderstone’s Safety Matters campaign includes five steps to safety in construction:

1. Commitment and understanding by managers and workers of safety responsibilities.
2. Consultation and communication between all trades and contractors on site to ensure safety procedures and decisions are actively implemented.
3. Recognition safety is a journey that never ends - safe work procedures are constantly reviewed, updated and improved.
4. Training and supervision is field based and practical. Supervisors live and breathe safety procedures and are not office bound. Supervisors conduct CHATS (construction hazard assessment talks) to ensure everyone on site is aware of safety procedures.
5. Regular reporting of safety success and opportunities for safety improvement. If someone sees something unsafe, work is stopped, the incident reported and the procedure reviewed.