At Horizon North, safety is of the highest importance in everything we do. Guided by our simple goal of achieving and maintaining incident and injury free operations, we work to ensure that every Horizon North employee and any stakeholder involved in our operations goes home safely at the end of every day.

To maintain Horizon North's industry leading safety performance, our Health, Safety and Environment (HSE) team uses key indicators to establish trends across our operations and identify areas for improvement. One of the most significant indicators we use to assess our overall safety success is our Total Recordable Incident Rate (TRIR), a number that is generally accepted by the safety industry as an appropriate snapshot of a company's safety culture and how they are performing in protecting their workers.

What is a Recordable Incident?

A Recordable Incident is any incident that results in medical treatment beyond first aid. It includes more severe incidents that result in modified work, lost time, potentially disabling injuries, permanent disability or death.

Calculating TRIR

Horizon North determines our TRIR on an annual basis with the following formula:

TRIR = (Number of Recordable Incidents) x 200,000 / (Total number of hours worked)

The number 200,000 in the formula reflects the average hours worked by 100 workers over the course of a year (2,000 hours per worker per year). The number resulting from the calculation indicates the number of recordable injuries our company has sustained per 100 workers over a twelve-month period.

When comparing TRIR statistics, a lower number is obviously better. As the number of recordable incidents increase, the TRIR will be higher unless the hours of work increase at a reflective rate. While Horizon North prides ourselves on our industry-leading results, we constantly monitor the TRIR to identify potential trends, determine root causes to prevent reoccurrence and continually improve our health and safety program.

Measuring Safety Performance - Why TRIR Matters

Our TRIR reflects the success of our efforts to reduce incidents and injuries. Because TRIR is a reactive statistic (i.e. there is nothing that can prevent a Recordable Incident that has already occurred), Horizon North focuses much of our work on taking steps to avoid the occurrence of those incidents, with proactive intervention reporting (PIR) playing a significant role. That reporting includes:

Hazard IDs: Hazard IDs serve to correct or report a hazardous condition or behaviour, or to make a suggestion to improve the health, safety or environment at a work site or office. This includes actions, equipment or environments that, if left uncorrected, could result in an injury or incident.

  • Example: A worker notices the exit of a camp door is blocked with supplies, creating a hazard if there is a need to evacuate. The hazard is recognized and recommendations are made to store supplies in a more appropriate area that will not put occupants at risk. Thousands of these IDs are submitted each year, and employees and the HSE team work together to correct the hazard.

Near Misses: Near misses are an undesirable event that, under slightly different circumstances, had the potential to cause harm, property damage, or loss (meaning damage, downtime, equipment damage or a personnel injury).

  • Example: An employee stumbled or slipped on a mat at the door but is not hurt, or an object falls but avoids hitting someone. We believe that near misses are a leading indicator of future safety performance. All near misses are reported by the employees and locations involved, so the circumstances that led to the incident can be shared across operations and corrected.

Behavioural Observations (Peer-to-Peer and Leadership): Behavioural observations are done by watching another individual completing a job and evaluating what is safe and unsafe and what needs to be revised or stopped. The process can be done verbally or by using a Behavioural Observation card for reference.

  • Example: A worker is observed not wearing hearing protection when using a trim saw. A follow-up conversation with the worker would explain the importance and wearing personal protective equipment over the ears and the company policy of wearing hearing protection.

Behavioural observations provide the foundation for making Horizon North safer by encouraging safe behaviour through positive reinforcement, learning safe behaviours from those we observe, and learning which working conditions and management systems work well and those that do not. To support documentation of site visits, it is requested that managers complete at least one Behavioural Observation per site visit.

Our TRIR matters because it helps guide us in our efforts to reduce incidents. It is an illustration of how successful the proactive intervention steps we take to protect our employees are, and a measurement of how well the value of safety is being embraced across our organization.

For both employees and clients, safety is critically important to us. While we work to ensure our employees and contractors go home to their loved ones at the end of each day, we also do the same for our clients. Our commitment to safety means you and your team go home safely as we work to complete your project on time with no injuries.

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Horizon North Logistics Inc. published this content on 02 October 2018 and is solely responsible for the information contained herein. Distributed by Public, unedited and unaltered, on 02 October 2018 20:47:01 UTC