Safety
TransAlta follows the international OHSAS 18001 occupational health and safety management system standards to improve safety performance and manage risks across all of our operations. We believe that zero safety incidents is possible. Our Target Zero safety program is in place to drive safety awareness into every aspect of the work we do. Target Zero includes:
- workplace environment
- environment, health and safety (EH&S) inspections
- investigations of every incident, and
- mandatory EH&S training
Despite a challenging year operationally and economically, TransAlta achieved its second best safety performance ever, with an injury frequency rate (IFR) for both employees and contractors of 1.41 compared to 1.28 in 2008. This did not, however, meet the 1.15 IFR target we had set. A total of 56 injuries were reported in 2009, compared to 50 in 2008. We recognize the need to focus on:
- near miss and hazard reporting and follow-up
- safety supervision during turnarounds, and
- safety awareness as a part of every job
Most safety issues for both employees and contractors in 2009 occurred at Sundance plant during a major outage. We did not maintain our standard of safety for this project. We learned that better safety supervision, hazard awareness, safety communication and safety training would have resulted in fewer incidents. TransAlta has since introduced new training programs for employees and is examining processes to improve contractor management.
Safety highlights for 2009 include Sarnia and Poplar Creek. The Sarnia cogeneration plant, winner of three of TransAlta’s five annual President’s Awards for safety, had an IFR of zero. Poplar Creek improved safety performance by 50 per cent with an IFR of 1.25 compared to 2.55 in 2008. The improvement is attributed to the introduction of new, tight fitting protective eyewear, as well as enhanced contractor training and behavioural based safety training for employees.
Due to the new eyewear, eye injuries were reduced from seven recordable eye injury incidents in 2008 to zero in 2009. The new eyewear is being instituted across TransAlta, and at the Poplar Creek facility’s host company Suncor’s operations.
