Overview - BlueScope Steel HSEC Report 2004

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Overview

At BlueScope Steel, health and safety are valued as an integral part of the way we undertake our business. We aspire to a goal of Zero Harm to people. This goal is an important driver for continuous improvement in health and safety performance across the Company.

The following beliefs form the basis for achieving our goal of Zero Harm:

Working safely is a condition of employment.
Employee involvement is essential.
Management is accountable for safety performance.
All injuries can be prevented.
Training employees to work safely is essential.
All operating exposures can be safeguarded.

We have in place a comprehensive company-wide Occupational Health and Safety Management System. Its purpose is to ensure the health and safety of our employees, customers, contractors, visitors and the public.

The Management System focuses on three basic aspects: safe people, safe systems and safe plant. Efforts in these areas are supported by strong and caring leadership, engaged employees and a robust management system.

BlueScope Steel's Safety Improvement Initiative has seen a substantial reduction in injuries. We have continued to make strong overall progress, with many businesses reporting noteworthy results.

Despite these improvements, a fatality occurred in our business on 29 June 2004 with the death of a contractor at our Brisbane Logistics Terminal in Australia.

We will never be satisfied with our safety performance until we reach our goal of Zero Harm; when every person who enters any one of our sites around the world, leaves in the same condition in which they arrived.

BlueScope Steel is striving to achieve at least a 20 per cent reduction in serious injuries (LTIFR and MTIFR) for the next year. Each business will select targets to support this objective.

The ongoing effort to further develop our leaders is an essential element of our overall strategy.

The company's current strategic direction has a three-pronged form of attack: felt leadership, engaged employees, and a robust management system.

We have increasingly adopted risk management practices to identify, assess and mitigate operational safety and health risks at our facilities. These include the implementation of risk registers at each operation, the support of key risk networks, and a higher level of attention to major hazard facility management.

Sites are also focused on raising the level of safety behaviour. To do this they are targeting activities such as all employees conducting OH&S audits, including behavioural safety audits, devising corrective actions, following the reporting of incidents and near misses, and monitoring to ensure that follow-up actions are implemented.

A standard technique for the investigation of significant incidents and near misses - the Incident Cause Analysis Method (ICAM) - is in place. ICAM in turn supports initiatives to communicate and share the lessons learned about the root causes and contributory factors in significant incidents and near misses.

Across the Company, each site strives to achieve health and safety goals and targets that have been established with the objective of continuously improving upon our OH&S Management System and reducing the risk of harm to our employees, contractors, and visitors to our sites.