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“I believe safety is core to the business. We must all recognise the responsibility each one of us has to ensure our own safety, the safety of our colleagues and those who work with us or who are affected by our operations.”STEVE HOLLIDAY, DEPUTY GROUP CHIEF EXECUTIVE
27%
Reduction in lost time injuries
Safety will always be at the centre of everything we do. During 2005/06, 117 of our employees received injuries that resulted in them taking time off work, a 27% reduction compared on a like-for-like basis with 2004/05.
The employee lost time injury frequency rate provides a more accurate indicator of year-on-year performance by taking into account the changes in employee numbers that result from acquisitions and disposals. The number of employee lost time injuries per 100,000 hours worked in 2005/06 fell to 0.28, a 24% improvement when compared with the previous year.
There has also been a significant reduction in the number of contractor lost time injuries across the Group, falling from 146 in 2004/05 to 119 in 2005/06, an 18.5% decrease.
0800 111 999
Retention of the 0800 number and re-branding
Following the sales of four of our gas distribution networks, we are operating the four remaining networks as one, now known as National Grid Gas. Its operating area is shown under Where we are.
We continue to operate the UK national gas emergency number (0800 111 999) for our own network, the sold networks and other gas transporters. During 2005/06, we handled approximately 2.5 million calls to the national gas emergency number.
We again exceeded our targets on safety-related standards of service for our gas distribution network.
More than 97% of ‘uncontrolled’ gas escapes (where the gas leak cannot be stopped by turning the gas supply off at the meter) were attended within one hour. More than 98% of ‘controlled’ gas escapes (where the gas leak can be stopped at the meter) were attended within two hours.
Our National Grid Property site at Ward Street, Bilston was one of the first to incorporate a road safety initiative as part of the clean up programme. The site is situated close to a residential area and within 500 yards of a primary school. During the 31-week project, 5,800 lorry movements were anticipated with up to 290 per week at the busiest times. The safety initiative included a school assembly briefing about road safety and the dangers of construction sites. To support this, we produced posters, wrote to parents and guardians, produced a driver road safety briefing pack for hauliers, thoroughly briefed the school crossing patrol and worked closely with the local authority. The campaign minimised risk to the public and educated both the local community and our contractors. This initiative is now being replicated at other sites around the UK.
In 2005, National Grid launched ‘DangerZone’, a comprehensive public safety awareness campaign in the US. DangerZone consists of multilingual billboard advertising, videos, brochures and posters to alert contractors, construction workers and homeowners to the danger of contacting overhead electrical lines with ladders, scaffolding, vehicles, heavy machinery and equipment. In the first year of DangerZone, contacts with overhead electricity cables were reduced significantly. We will be expanding the campaign this year to include underground safety and the importance of the public calling a freephone number to check on the presence of underground lines and pipes before digging. Additionally, teachers in elementary and secondary schools within National Grid’s US service territory requested and received more than 420,000 student booklets and 4,500 safety videos designed to increase safety awareness among children.
National Grid’s Golden Rules are a framework to help everyone in the UK gas and electricity businesses to be safe in everything they do. The Rules apply as much to working in offices as they do to working on site.
The Golden Rules are a fundamental building block for ‘Road to Zero’, our five-year programme to reach the target of zero injuries.
The Golden Rules do not introduce new policies and procedures. They reinforce what we should be doing all the time, setting the standards for good safety behaviours and continuing to develop a culture whereby safety becomes second nature. They will also be used to identify areas in which we can make our working practices and behaviours even safer.
There is an ongoing programme of exchange of best practice between the US transmission line services and UK transmission line construction and maintenance groups. Phase I was completed when US staff visited the UK, which resulted in the implementation within transmission line services of the double-lanyard fall protection system.
The double-lanyard system ensures enhanced fall protection by allowing at least one lanyard to be securely clipped to the structure at all times while ascending to and descending from heights. The UK transmission groups visited the US in April 2006 to demonstrate various tools, equipment and procedures such as the hook ladder and insulator replacement techniques for possible implementation in the US. These tools and techniques enable workers to perform their transmission construction tasks better, while reducing the potential risk for injury and providing for increased work efficiencies.
National Grid Metering and OnStream place great importance upon safety performance not only internally but within our service provider network.
During 2005/06, over 6.3 million jobs were completed by the businesses with only two employee lost time injuries and three contractor lost time injuries, both representing over a 40% improvement on 2004/05.
Going forward, both companies will continue to work closely with service providers to identify joint initiatives to improve safety performance further.