Reflections... 2021 Safety Performance Reflections
APM Team,
Our safety keystone - the safety disciplines we adhere to on a daily basis - is the foundation for how we deliver performance excellence as well as a great customer and employee experience. Reflecting on 2021, I am very proud of our safety performance. Why?
Stats
Our 2021 safety metrics prove our continued improvement in our journey to being a best in class safety organization. For example:
Our one APM safety injury and illness rate for 2021 was 0.55 (a 14% year over year improvement), the second lowest rate in our APM history and the lowest since we integrated our Canadian rotating teams and our USA and Canadian boiler teams.
Speaking of boiler, our US boiler division celebrated 2 years without a significant injury on November 15th. They are currently 797 days without a significant injury.
On that note, our last significant injury within all of APM was in early October and we are currently 106 days without a significant injury.
While these lagging indicators are something to celebrate, I am more proud of our leading indicator performance, our daily engagement in certain critical to safety behaviors. Last year, our field teams engaged in 4,414 hazard hunts, 216 STOP works, and 11,913 OPEN reports.
Stories
While the numbers prove our performance, we are also being recognized as a safety best in class organization. Some examples:
Both APCom & APM received TAUC Thomas J Reynolds Safety Awards
Canadian Boiler Division received a Canadian Safety Achievement Awards
Byron Davis (APM Boiler Superintendent) received an Entergy Safety Award
APM Data Analytics & Business Intelligence Wins Dataiku Frontrunner Award
You can read about other specific customer job recognitions for 100% safety excellence on our APM Delivers Blog, such as this article about our Gas, Boiler, and Specialty work at TVA Paradise.
Our journey for APM to be both proven (the stats) and recognized (the stories) as a best in class safety organization is progressing well.
While it is important to reflect on and celebrate our 2021 performance, we still have work to do in 2022. We had 13 significant injuries (and 48 first aids) in 2021. That is 13 (and 48) too many. How do we continue our improvement to best in class?
1. As individuals and teams, continue to focus on our human performance toolbox (see attached).
Prioritize the disciplines that lead to excellence, the disciplines we often call our Safety Keystone mentality. Start your day with your plan and your commitments (STA + CBS). Follow your standard processes and procedures (Standard Work and SOPs). Continue your normal rhythms (Daily & Weekly Management). And if you sense something is wrong, STOP!
To learn more about our CBS philosophy, watch this video on YouTube. All employees will be assigned to annual refresher training in AirTime Learning on this topic.
2. As an organization, get better at identifying and developing safety systems and controls.
For example, you are seeing a lot about fatigue management as we enter the first half outage season. This is not just about providing human performance tools for people to use when they are tired. ex: raising your hand (in essence a STOP work) to ask for a break. Rather, we are focused on designing a process to evaluate fatigue risks in advance (before you are tired) and have prescribed mitigations (or controls) in place to minimize the risk of fatigue.
Thank you all for joining our APM journey to best-in-class safety. Getting there and sustaining this excellence will take all of us.