CTCI Continues to Deepen Its Organization-Wide Safety Culture by Organizing Safety Reflections Activities

─Daniel Ting, Senior Manager at HSE Management Department, CTCI Corporation, Group Engineering Business

As Taiwan’s No. 1 and one of the top 100 international engineering, procurement, construction (EPC) turnkey contractors, CTCI Group not only leads in the engineering field in Taiwan, but also makes sure its internal management in terms of corporate sustainability, occupational safety and health, and environmental protection practices are in line with international standards. Also, by introducing international practices, it seeks constant improvements to set the industry benchmark. Adhering to the "safety first" mantra, CTCI continues to protect the lives of its staff and business partners through enhanced safety, health, and environmental management standards, and wins the recognition of customers with the "most reliable" engineering service quality. 

In this article, we take the "CTCI 2020 Safety Reflection Activities" held last year as an example to illustrate how we comprehensively enhance the safety and health awareness of our members, strengthen the safety and health management performance, and explore safety issues in daily operations to ensure the safety of working environment with a top-down approach that builds upon a safety mindset from the management to the on-site, front-line employees. The activities can be broken down into four aspects, "visible leadership," "health, safety, and environmental (HSE) capabilities training," "reward scheme," and "project site HSE scorecard."

Visible Leadership

When it comes to effectively steering corporate culture, the attitude of managers is like a rudder, which has a significant impact on the overall performance of employees. Therefore, CTCI requires that regardless of the company or the project, all levels of supervisors should fully demonstrate that they truly value safety and health issues. In addition to frequently talking about safety and health management related topics, personally presiding over toolbox meetings, they should also visit the project sites personally, and directly interact with front-line personnel. When a major accident occurs, apart from project managers, senior directors of the related department must also go to the scene of the accident to understand the situation, so that colleagues recognize that we really place importance in their safety and health, thus to create a “safety-first” working atmosphere.

HSE Capabilities Training

Operations at construction sites are mostly high-risk. Coupled with the fact that domestic contractors are of smaller size and have higher turnover rates, the problem of ensuring that every worker has the correct safety and health awareness is a tricky one. Therefore, in addition to holding trainings and toolbox meetings for each new worker as required by law, all CTCI project sites would enforce trainings for high-risk operations on sites (such as electrical safety training, excavation training, fall prevention from heights training). Trainings based on different work types are carried out to enhance workers’ awareness of safety hazards at sites. Site supervisors also need to undergo regular and strict HSE awareness trainings to ensure a seamless safety education. Through continuous trainings, safety awareness will be deeply rooted in every worker’s mind.

Reward Schemes

In addition to enrooting the concept of safety first within our colleagues through the management’s influence and HSE capabilities trainings, we would also organize various motivation schemes to show that CTCI attaches great importance to safety, hence to strengthen colleagues’ safety behaviors. 

Our motivation schemes include the following: holding celebrations for projects that have reached one million man-hours without LTI milestones, so that colleagues and contractors participating in the project can recognize the company’s strong dedication to establishing good safety performance. Besides, each project would routinely select staff who has the best site HSE performance, as well as select best BBS (Behavior-Based Safety, behavioral safety) observers. CTCI also provided an "Annual Work Safety Special Bonus" for projects with good safety performance between 2018 and 2019 to encourage project members to adopt HSE management measures at sites. Moreover, starting from this year (2021), projects with exemplary HSE achievements and related personnel will be selected quarterly as HSE role models as a way to motivate our project members to maintain good safety behaviors and attitudes, and work together to improve project sites’ safety performance.

Project Site HSE Score Card

Ideally, the best HSE performance does not come from rigid management, but comes from everyone’s true understanding of HSE essence and a willingness to follow HSE practices. Only by eliminating risks and maintaining a safe working environment can real HSE performance be achieved. CTCI’s 2020 safety reflection activity saw the introduction of a new worldwide HSE management thinking to the construction division under CTCI’s Group Engineering Business, and as a result, we have improved our project sites’ HSE performance. Apart from substantial requirements, rules, and rewards, we believe that the site management team’s attitude towards HSE management and the formation of HSE culture are fundamental. We also introduced the "Project Site HSE Score Card," requiring all project site managers to self-evaluate their performance. Together with behavioral safety observations, near-miss accident reports, and statistics on violations of life-saving rules, the scorecard results will be reported during the project sites’ weekly HSE meetings, where the statistical results of all project sites will be analyzed and discussed.

The "Project Site HSE Score Card" is a handy tool that allows project site managers to self-evaluate the performance of all HSE items listed, check whether the HSE measures are actually adopted, ponder over issues detected, and try to solve them. The ultimate goal of the score card is more about the site management team’s attitude towards HSE and a commitment to make constant improvements. That is why performance is measured in terms of how many issues are detected and improved upon afterwards, not in terms of scores. This allows the management unit to spot the strengths of projects’ HSE performance and give recognitions. For those projects spotted with deficiencies, we will also be able to make improvements as soon as possible.

Conclusion

Employees’ correct awareness and attitude of, and determination on safety and health practices are keys to ensure a corporate culture that prices safety and health and continual improvement. Apart from urging management personnel to take responsibility for safety and health, we also tirelessly remind workers on site to comply with regulations, and ensure constant monitoring during operations. Only by adhering to the safety first spirit can we truly minimalize occupational accidents and establish a safe and healthy working environment.

As a leading engineering group in Taiwan and a notable business in highly competitive world markets, CTCI Group will continue to reflect upon its HSE practices and make improvements through benchmarking, experience accumulation, and R&D innovation. It strives to fulfill its corporate social responsibilities, show the world its emphasis on HSE, and help improve the industry’s HSE standards. That way, CTCI will progress towards the vision of being "the most reliable global engineering services provider."