Intranet Promotes Company-Wide Safety

With more than 140 field technicians operating throughout the U.S. on any given day, regular and prompt communication of safety issues is critical to operations.

By Brian Derge

Safety First is the name of a key component of our company's quality and safety program developed over a multi-year period starting in 2001. We invested more than $1 million, but a small company would not have to make such a large investment.

All of our field employees must successfully complete a week-long boot camp that is heavily focused on safety and the associated safe working practices. All technicians must pass an annual safety exam to remain certified to work for the company.

Company Intranet for Fast Communication
A key feature of our Safety First program is that it is housed online, on our company's intranet site. It holds all of our controlled documents, process and procedure manuals, safety handbook, training materials, safety bulletins and associated reference materials. It is accessed by all of our field personnel throughout the country on a continual basis.

Monthly Safety Conference Call Minutes
We have monthly conference calls within each region of the company. All technicians participate in the calls along with corporate and regional quality/safety managers. In these calls, we address current safety-related topics, such as any formal communications from the company, regional safety performance issues, customer-specific training materials, road test certification issues and driver's skills materials.

Near-Misses
Any time one of our technicians has a near-miss, we have a formal process for capturing and sharing this information with the entire field services organization, in order to minimize the potential for the situation to recur. These situations offer excellent learning opportunities, which are communicated to technicians via e-mail, then posted in this section of the intranet site. Near-misses are also covered in all regional monthly safety conference calls.

Root Cause Analysis
Every accident or injury receives a formal Root Cause Analysis. Multiple layers of company management are involved, including the regional manager, regional quality/safety manager, division vice president, chief operating officer and the employee who was involved. The results of all Root Cause Analyses are contained and archived in this section of the Web site and are shared with all relevant personnel.

Safety Ratings
This section of the intranet site includes reports of the company's OSHA ratings, statistics on recordable injuries, incident reports and related ratings and safety statistics.

Keeping Current
Any time an update is made to the safety section of our intranet site, an e-mail bulletin is automatically sent to all related personnel, advising them of the new or updated material.

Large oil companies and other large petroleum operators all have very strict safety programs, requiring compliance by all their contractors. Our intranet site houses all of our customer-specific safety requirements, so that technicians are always up-to-date on customers' latest safety initiatives and specific requirements.

We provide regular safety updates to our customers, reporting the detailed safety results and statistics that we have captured on our Intranet site. Customers respond very well to such open communication of safety results and initiatives. Given the potential for significant safety concerns in our industry, they appreciate the priority we place on safety issues and can see our safety record.

Our intranet system allows us to capture all of our important safety information and promptly report it to everyone in the field who needs to know it. We are convinced that our commitment to safety has paid off many times over in the form of reduced accidents, lower insurance premiums and bottom-line profitability.

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The PEI Journal • Second Quarter 2007 • Volume 1, No. 2 • Contents are Copyright © Data Key Communications, Inc.
All rights reserved. • Nothing may be reproduced in whole or part without written permission of the publisher.