Preventing accidents and working in safety is an objective of primary importance for Snam Rete Gas. Proof of this are the Snam Rete Gas Health, Safety and Environment Policy and the setting up of special organisational departments in the companies which are responsible for drawing up, scheduling and checking plans to improve hygiene and safety in the workplace.
We firmly believe that, to achieve and obtain these objectives, the engagement of everyone who works in the company is essential. For this reason we have worked on several fronts: information, communications campaigns and training.
Personnel are regularly and promptly informed on the activities and initiatives underway, by means of the company intranets. In addition we organise regular safety meetings in the various different work areas, to cover more specific topics.
Periodic safety meetings have also been held which have involved the Employers, the Safety executives concerned, the head of the Prevention and Protection Service, the occupational physician and employees’ safety and environment representatives.
In our companies we have started specific accident prevention campaigns and initiatives, such as: “Communicating Safety”, “Let’s Do Safety”, “Italgas Safety Trophy”, and “Zero Accidents Award”.
All of these initiatives have the primary objective of involving the employees to adopt careful and safe forms of conduct in carrying out their work duties, as a contribution to safeguarding health and safety for oneself and for others.
To manage these issues, all companies of the Group have set up employee health and safety management systems in line with international regulations. The objective that we have set ourselves is to certify, within two to three years, all the management systems in our companies to the international OHSAS 18001 standard. This objective has already been achieved by Italgas.
Accident prevention
The prevention of accidents in the workplace is our principal safety objective, and it is implemented through the adoption of targeted actions to eliminate or reduce the risk factors that are characteristic of work activities, and through in-depth analysis of the causes of accidents that enables the implementation special improvement actions. The analysis and recording of all accidents (professional, general, due to road accidents, commuting accidents) is done using a specific software application that enables all affected managers and departments to be notified immediately of the accident, giving details of the event, an analysis of the causes and the proposed actions identified.
The actions and results that emerge from the accident analysis are also a topic for discussion at the regular safety meetings, at which the staff is informed and made aware of the causes and of any measures for prevention and protection adopted.
Plans for safety improvement and accident prevention, mainly centred on reducing accidents, have mainly concerned actions to inform personnel and raise their awareness, in order to promote safe and careful forms of conduct, observance of the safety and operating procedures, and the correct use of work equipment and of safety devices. These plans have been accompanied by the maintenance and verification of equipment, plant systems and devices and safety devices, conducted both by in-house personnel and by external bodies or qualified external companies.
The actions put in place in recent years have produced good results both for the Group and for the individual companies, as can be seen from the trend in the accident indicators.
In 2009 in total there were 73 accidents of which 27 while commuting (i.e. an accident that occurred to the employee while he or she was travelling from home to work or vice-versa). Of the 46 accidents that occurred while the employee was actually at work, 22 were cause by road accidents (48%), 19 by professional risks (41%) and 5 by generic risks (11%). The Group’s frequency index was 4.54 and its severity index was 0.18. This year once again no fatal accidents occurred.
INJURIES AT WORK FREQUENCY INDEX (*)
INJURIES AT WORK SEVERITY INDEX (**)
INJURIES AT WORK FREQUENCY INDEX 2009 (*)
INJURIES AT WORK SEVERITY INDEX 2009(**)
(*) number of accidents at work (not including commuting accidents), with incapacity of at least one day, per million hours worked
(**) number of days of work lost due to accidents (not including commuting accidents) with incapacity of at least one day, per thousand hours worked
Safeguarding health
We are continuing our commitment to protect the health of employees, principally by working on the ongoing control of the risk elements identified in the company processes and on the implementation of adequate measures of prevention and protection.
We regularly carry out on-site inspection visits with the aim of assessing adequate and suitable environmental and working conditions and to identify possible preventive and/or improvement measures, and, where there are characteristic agents of specific work environments, we carry out instrumental investigations and regular monitoring. In 2009, 771 environmental investigations were carried out.
Specific preventive health measures are provided for employees who, for work reasons, need to visit countries outside Europe. We have continued to promote specific health protection initiatives, such as the cancer prevention and influenza vaccination campaigns, the smoking ban in company work areas and the ban on selling alcoholic drinks in the company canteens.
For personnel who are exposed to specific risk factors, we have regular health monitoring procedures in place, and over the year 2,584 medical checkups were conducted by the Occupational Physician based on specific health protocols drawn up according to the specific risk. Added to these are any supplementary specialist checkups that are deemed necessary.
Overall, health control activities included 2,634 medical checkups, 4,288 medical scans, and 633 protocols for lab tests.