Today is Steel Safety Day, a day for World Steel and its member companies to pause and dedicate their attention to the industry’s most important priority – the safety and health of its workers. Normally taking place on 28 April (aligned with the International Labour Organization’s World Day for Safety and Health at Work), but this year postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Steel Safety Day reinforces awareness of the most common causes of serious safety incidents in the steel industry and contributes to creating a safer working environment worldwide. Each Steel Safety Day highlights a particular safety incident cause and special attention is given to raising awareness of how to prevent associated risks. This year, for the second consecutive year, Steel Safety Day focuses on process safety incidents.
In a normal year, members are encouraged to conduct a safety audit across their sites that focus on the year’s theme. Last year, 4,63,500 people from 820 sites worldwide took part in the audit. Nearly 9,76,000 employees and contractors work at sites involved in the audit. The audits of course require a heavy presence on the shop floor, which in 2020 would in itself clearly pose safety risks. Recognising that everyone will have to be flexible in their approach this year, we are asking all our members to do what they feel they can to review their process safety approaches.
Although it is quite right that managing COVID-19 be taken into account, the steel industry cannot and will not forget that the ‘conventional’ safety and health risks are still there. As such, today World Steel recognises excellence in seven of its member companies for delivering demonstrable improvements in safety and health.
Andrew Purvis, Director, Safety, Environment and Technology said, “the recognitions from this and previous years are a very valuable source of case studies for all our members to take advantage of. All safety programmes may need adjusting for different cultures, but the recognition programme, which has been running for more than 10 years, provides a treasure trove of proven successful material. We encourage all our members to make use of this impressive library.”
This year Tata Steel has been recognised for Excellence in Process Safety Management (PSM) has been identified as one of the key safety strategies for achieving the Tata Steel corporate objective of ‘Committed to Zero’. After successfully implementing PSM in 46 high hazard departments, the next challenge was to sustain the good work and pursue continuous improvement.
