As part of the company’s endeavour to achieve a higher level of Safety awareness it plans to achieve the Occupational Health and Safety Assessment Series (OHSAS) 18001 certification by December 31, 2004. OHSAS implementation is a line management function and heads of departments and divisions will be responsible for it.

Methods to combat fire are demonstrated as part of fire safety effort

OHSAS provides a “systematic, structured and documented approach to eliminate, reduce and control risks to employees and properties.” The company felt the need for the system because of its current OH & S records, which it considers unsatisfactory, as well as poor safety behaviour among its employees and the company’s wish to comply with legal requirements.

OHSAS is based on the classic “IEDIM” steps of identify hazards, evaluate risks and develop measures to eliminate, minimise or control them. The objective of the effort is to change risky behaviour into risk-free behaviour.

Behaviour based safety ensures that a company is over 70% safe as against less than 50%, when it is 0merely compliance driven.

The new approach to Safety

The company has formed a Task Force in response to the lack of improvement in Safety standards. In comparison, there has been a significant change for the better in all other processes at the Steel Works. The Task Force found that one of the reasons was “the safety function had remained deprived of qualitative initiatives and improvements.” Rather than remain limited to statutory drivers, Tata Steel needs to be proactive with regard to safety.

The major concerns the company needs to address are: Poor quality of contractor’s staff; ineffective and/or lack of safety systems and procedures; general reluctance of ownership on safety matters; ineffective safety audits and correction process at the grass root level.

The STF worked on overcoming these problems and has devised new initiatives to improve the involvement of employees in safety. These initiatives include several IT based initiatives such as a Safety Improvement System, Incident Reporting System, Contractor’s Safety Performance, Vendor Empanelment System, Improved Gate Pass System and Vehicle Inspection System. The training initiatives developed by the company include modules for new workers, personnel of the Safety Department, contractors’ supervisors and a training center for Contractor’s Labour.

In addition, activity-based initiatives have been launched. All these initiatives are expected to ensure that unsafe conditions are proactively identified and corrected, there is uniformity and consistency in reports, transparency and consistency in response to safety related issues and wider involvement of line managers.