Safety Stories - BlueScope Steel HSEC Report 2004

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Safety Awards

North Star BlueScope Steel Recognised for Excellence

North Star BlueScope Steel was awarded the Ohio Governor's Excellence in Workers' Compensation Award for safety performance on 26 July 2004.

One of six winners from six different categories of companies, North Star BlueScope Steel was selected from the 280,000 employers in Ohio, USA, to receive the Self Insured Employer Category award.

When announcing the award, Governor Bob Taft said he was proud to recognise North Star BlueScope Steel for outstanding achievements. He described employers like North Star BlueScope Steel as demonstrating a commitment to go to great lengths in ensuring their employees work in safe environments.

The Governor's Excellence in Workers' Compensation Award is given to employers that focus on aggressively reducing workplace accidents and actively supporting injured workers with return-to-work programs.

President North Star BlueScope Steel, Jim Jonasen confirmed that the Company was very proud of its safety performance and emphasised the award recognised the high safety standards and programs in place.

Within North Star BlueScope Steel team leaders communicate daily with employees on their crew regarding safety matters and the Company is continually involving all employees in training programs.

Also, for the third straight year, customers voted North Star BlueScope Steel as the number one flat rolled steel supplier in the United States. The results of the prestigious annual Jacobsen and Associates survey were released in January 2004.

Jacobson and Associates is an independent firm, whose survey ranks 29 US steel producers on the basis of data gathered from thousands of customers.

Western Port Wins PACE Zenith Award

Western Port's Metal Coating Line No.4 (MCL4) Radiant Tube Burner project team took out the top prize in the 2004 PACE Zenith Awards (Metal Products Manufacturing category).

This was followed by a Highly Commended award in the Manufacturer's Monthly Magazine Endeavour Awards' Safety Scheme of the Year category.

The awards recognise the engineering excellence and innovation involved in the project.

The project aimed to reduce safety related risks on the MCL4 furnace. Due to changes in the statutory requirements for managing gas safety risk, and the process improvement initiatives being pursued, it was decided that automated burner management equipment would be installed on the radiant tube burners.

The team was faced with two distinctly different options in relation to installing the burner management equipment. The first was to retrospectively fit automated burner management equipment to the existing burner system. The second option was to totally replace the burner system at considerable cost to the project. The decision was made to develop the first option.

A number of steps were key to the success of the project, with two stages of testing employed to ensure a safe and reliable design. The first stage involved development of automatic ignition and flame monitoring on a single burner. The second stage included adding burner control components and development and programming the safety programmable logic controller (PLC) hardware and software required to operate the system. The end result was a burner that was reliable in operation in conjunction with a well-developed control and safety PLC system to support it.

The equipment installation phase commenced, with the developed burner management system applied to the 69 burners together with the safety PLC and control system equipment. The equipment was installed with the line running and the system architecture was configured so that each burner could be individually commissioned or isolated without affecting any other burner.

Commissioning of the burner system took place over a two-week period in January 2004. Each burner was individually isolated and set up with new valving, flame ignition and monitoring components and thoroughly tested by an approved Type B gas consultant.

Significant reduction of risk has been realised, with associated benefits including a reduction in energy consumption, reduced maintenance and lowering ambient temperature and industrial noise levels in the area. The overall project included the construction of a new control room facility for the PLC processor equipment and there is room for future development capability.

Further work is planned to continue risk reduction for the MCL4 furnace and to realise the process improvement initiatives of improved painting quality of ZINCALUME steel from MCL4.

Excellence in Safety Award

BlueScope Lysaght sites have won the Australian Steel Institute's National Site Safety Excellence Award two years running.

The BlueScope Lysaght Archerfield site in Queensland won the award in 2003 and our Lyndhurst site in Victoria were winners in 2004.

Lyndhurst's Award followed the February 2003 relocation of all BlueScope Lysaght's Melbourne operations to a new site at Lyndhurst. The judges commented that with 90 per cent of the 135 workforce being new to the steel industry, the achievement of zero Lost Time Injuries (LTIs) for the first year of operations was a tribute to the safety systems put in place.

The Site Safety Excellence Awards were developed by the ASI National Safety Committee to recognise and promote improvement and excellence in safety among ASI member companies.

The awards are presented to a nominated site, factory or department of a company involved in steel processing, distribution or fabrication that demonstrates a strong commitment to improving safety.

ASI is now building on the success of the former Steel Institute of Australia, which assisted the Australian steel distribution industry to make long term improvements in safety.