Sharing knowhow in offshore wind construction

Ensuring Supplier Safety via Best Practices – Part 1

Ensuring supplier safety via best practise

By Kirsten Bank Christensen, Vice President, HSEQ, A2SEA

Mobilisation projects are a valuable opportunity for cooperatively improving site safety with many suppliers. A2SEA’s ZERO HARM Mobilisation initiative benefits more than 30 suppliers annually. It calls for projects to achieve zero Lost Time Injuries with Life Changing Effects, despite many challenges.

Mobilisations – beware!

Vessel mobilisations represent the most challenging projects in the industry, comprising an extensive scope of work, multiple suppliers (each with differing levels of safety maturity), over 100 workers at a time, tight deadlines, numerous lifts and multiple work environment risks. Given these factors, perfecting mobilisations is a perfect opportunity to make a powerful contribution to the industry’s safety agenda.

Realising this, offshore wind installation contractor A2SEA became intent on reducing the likelihood of near misses with high-potential consequences. ‘ZERO HARM Mobilisation’ as the resulting initative is called, has turned out to have far-reaching benefits for many companies in the industry.

Raising the bar

A2SEA isn’t the only offshore wind construction company to perform mobilisations – and it’s not alone in caring deeply about safety, either. The company’s ZERO HARM Mobilisation programme, however, sets a new, holistic standard for planning and coordination of mobilisation projects, using centralised leadership and control as its core principles.

Where conventional mobilisations rely on the ability of each sub-contractor to manage its own team’s safety within agreed schedules and procedures for the overall project, ZERO HARM Mobilisation requires A2SEA, as the project owner, to dedicate additional administration resources that allow the entire workforce to be centrally monitored, controlled and optimised on an on-going basis. As a result, the company’s suppliers come to share the same rules, focus and commitment throughout each operation, lifting their own on-site safety performance across the board. In fact, since 2012, more than 30 suppliers have benefited from the programme every year.

ZERO HARM Mobilisation works with a clear set of objectives, including:

  • No Lost Time Injuries with life-changing effects
  • Lost Time Injury Frequency < 0 LTIF
  • Total Recordable Injury Frequency < 0 TRIF
  • Falling Object Frequency < 1.5 FOF

Sharing best practices

ZERO HARM Mobilisation constantly builds upon best practices to lead and plan mobilisation activities with meticulous care, incorporating factors such as the work scope, interfaces, business partners and previous performances, while making allowances for changes in circumstances.

A core initial activity is the Supplier Safety Day, where broad insights on lessons learned from previous projects are shared, as well as detailed operational descriptions. Suppliers are encouraged to understand the significance of these and tune their own procedures to suit. The events also boost each supplier’s feeling of being on the team, align expectations and improve the professional working relationship.

 

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