1. An Incident & Injury Free Culture:
Glenn Thomas
Corporate S.H.E. Manager
Great Lakes Dredge & Dock Company, LLC
An Incident & Injury Free Culture:
Changing the Face of Project Operations

2. Some Attitudes about Dredging Safety
“Hey, we work in rough offshore conditions with heavy floating equipment – people are going to get hurt.”
“What do you expect -this is dredging!”
“We are just a body - When someone gets hurt they just call the union and get another worker”
This summed up the general attitude towards safety at Great Lakes in 2005

5. Dredge Alaska caught Offshore of West Hampton Long Island
WELL Things did happen and people did get hurt

7. High Performance Safety Incident and Injury Free (IIF)
A process of ‘realignment of a company’s safety culture”
Enabling a change in safety attitudes from simple compliance with rules and regulations to a mindset that intends to eliminate work related incidents and injuries all together.
Chevron, Skanska, Lend Lease, Jacobs Engineering, American Infrastructure and several other large organizations had successfully embraced IIF
Manson 2004, Great Lakes 2005, Weeks 2008
Some of you may not have heard about Incident and Injury Free
Chevron, Skanska, Bovis, several international companies that have embraced IIF

8. What is Incident & Injury Free (IIF)
The focus is on the
personal side of safety
Caring about one another
Taking responsibility for one’s actions
Committing to creating a safe work environment
Adopting the attitude that no injury is acceptable
It’s about speaking up and expressing your concern when you see something unsafe
Putting Back to back together

9. Putting Back to back together
It’s about planning ahead and asking questions such as “what are the dangerous things that can happen to me on this job/task and what can I do to protect myself and others against them?”

10. Three key challenges for employees
Observing my co-workers and myself “asleep at the wheel” or preoccupied.
Speaking up when I see someone At-Risk.
Being open to change when someone speaks to me.

11. Front Line Supervisors Sphere of Control and Influence
Models S.H.E. values and principles daily
Inspires and influences employees’ safety attitudes and behaviors
Provides coaching on correcting unsafe behavior or acts
Good knowledge of a company’s SMS
Gives positive recognition
Gives constructive feedback
Balances project-wide performance in quality and productivity with safety

12. Employees drive Safety
Every employee a safety champion
Report Near Misses
Review Job Safety Analysis
Recognize and manage risk (theirs and co-workers)
Carry safety home where 90% of accident occur

13. Integration of Senior Leadership into Safety
Visible, demonstrated commitment
High standards of performance
Line management accountability
Knowledgeable and motivated safety staff
Performance measurement
Thorough investigations and assisting with recommended remedial measures

14. Management’s Commitment to IIF
What Leadership Expects from YOU!
If it’s not safe, don’t do it, and don’t let your co-worker do it either.
If you see something that is unsafe, speak up immediately, there and then, to your supervisor.
If you are not sure of something or do not understand the task, stop and ask.
What you can count on from Management?
If you stop a task for a safety reason, we will back you up.
If you bring up a safety concern, we will address it promptly.
If there is an injury, we want to learn from it not focus blame so we can eliminate the next injury.

15. Sustaining and Improving Safety Efforts
Safety Leadership Teams
Review safety performance
Drive continuous improvement
Safety Management System
Internal Standards
Auditing process
A means to identify & share best practices
Transparency
Sharing performance results

16. Examples of IIF tools used at project sites
Training programs, transformational safety , OSHA, leadership and communication skill building
Company-wide injury and near-miss broadcasts
Incident analysis and trends
Formal orientation process
Orientation videos
Familiarization checklists
Mentoring
Safe Work Practices video
“Stop Work” authority
End of Shift Safety Feedback
IIF Safety Action Alerts & bulletins
Safety stand-downs
Pre-shift meetings
Job Safety Analysis (JSA)
Site safety advisors partner with operations personnel
Safety Rule Book
Project launch meetings with crew and management

17. How IIF has Changed Site Operations
All projects begin with an IIF Kick Off Meeting
Crew
Management
Client, Union Reps & Subcontractors
Open discussions, not lectures
Attitude towards safety, speaking up, being approachable, hazard recognition, commitments to one another
Project overview, planning, logistics
All projects begin with an IIF Kick Off Meeting
>held on site with full crew participation
>Corporate and Site Management
>Client, Union representatives and Subcontractors are invited to participate
This is not a Safety Department led meeting
Operations drives Safety
This is not a lecture - open discussions about attitudes towards safety, speaking up, being approachable, hazard recognition and commitments to one another
Project overview, logistics, planning, specific risks

18. Taking dredging safety in a different direction
Traditional Direction
Discipline / reprimand
Employees comply with safety policies & procedures
Reactive response to incidents and injuries
Safety Officers (perceived as “cops”)
Top-down safety solutions by Safety Department
Management dictates goals
Transformational Direction
Coach / counsel
Employees commit to work safely
Track at-risk behavior and injury trends and initiate remedial measures
Safety advisors to operations: seen as members of the operations team
Bottom-up: Safety problems identified and solutions developed by crewmembers with support from Safety Department
Front-line supervisors set goals

19. Our Industry
Safety performance has improved more in the last 8 years than the previous 100.
Safety is no longer thought of as a hindrance to operations
Operations drives Safety
IIF is embedded at Great Lakes, Manson, Weeks Marine
Operating Engineers and Gulf Coast Crews have embraced it
Great Lakes International operations in the Middle East leads our 4 Divisions in Safety Performance!

21. The Return on Investment
Pre-IIF Incident Rate and 2011 man hours =120 more incidents
Lost time incident rates dropped from 4 /100 to 1/100
Recordable incident rates dropped from 8/100 to 1.9/100
Longshoremen’s insurance premiums reduced 40%
Protection and Indemnity insurance premiums reduced 35%
We are a far better company because of IIF.
It’s the right thing to do!
In todays world we have to look at our return on investment, but first lets talk about the human return. Using our pre IIF incident rate (TRIR) and our 2011 man hours, Great Lakes would have injured 120 more crewmen that we actually did last year families impacted by a work related injury. How do you measure that in dollars?

22. Challenges to Sustainability
Sustaining the gains made & keeping the message fresh
Indoctrination of transient crews
IIF for sub contractors
Complacency related to Low incident rates
Leadership engagement
Never forgetting the fatalities
Transition from lagging indicators to leading indicators
Near Miss Reporting
Focusing on Behavioral Based Safety .
Safety Example: Dredge Manhattan Island started a beach renourishment project in Abu Dhabi last week.
-Brought in the first load to the prime contractors mooring barge and secured the ship to pump ashore.
-prime contractors crew had difficulty with hose connection
-2 Manhattan crew (Filipinos) went on deck to assist
-they pulled out their pocket JSA to prep for the hose task
-the prime contractors crew refused to participate in the JSA
-GL’s Manhattan crew stepped back and would not assist until the JSA was performed.

23. IIF Reduces Injuries
Live it everywhere!
Live it every day!