Safety culture unsurpassed in water and wastewater industry
HOUSTON, April 3, 2007 - Veolia Water North America has posted the best employee safety statistics in its history for a calendar year, beating the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) for private-industry water, wastewater and other systems by more than 200 percent.
Veolia Water's recordable-incident rate (RIR), which reflects the number of individuals involved in a work-related injury or illness per 100 full-time employees, was 4.1, compared to the BLS average of 7.6. The lost-time-incident (LTIR) rate, which reflects the number of individuals involved in a work-related injury or illness resulting in days away from work per 100 full-time employees, was 0.6 compared to the BLS average of 2.3. Equally impressive, the industrial project safety statistics for RIR and LTIR were 1.5 and 0.2 respectively.
"Our performance exceeded our own expectations and also knocked the industry statistics out of the water," said Joseph Burgess, Veolia Water North America President and CEO. "I'm incredibly proud that we've achieved such respectable safety numbers. The success of the safety program was a commitment by all employees at all levels of the organization to understand their individual and collective roles and to act upon them."
Dan Ryan, who is responsible for the environmental, health, safety and security program for the company that employs some 2,700 and works with more than 270 municipal and industrial customers, believes policies and procedures certainly are the cornerstones of a safety program but typically are the least effective components toward accident reduction.
"A safety program's ultimate success or failure relies on employee involvement, accountability and management commitment - demonstrated through leadership-by-example from the president to the front-line supervisor, and at Veolia Water we have that," adds Ryan.
The company's safety results mean that approximately 95 percent of all its projects celebrated "no lost-time accidents" milestones (ranging from 1 to 22 years) and 85 percent of all projects had no OSHA-recordable injuries/illnesses.
Additionally, through the continued development and refinement of process control management plans, Veolia Water's environmental compliance showed continuous improvement last year, meeting 99 percent compliance levels. "This is especially good considering that we operate many public facilities with historical compliance problems," adds Ryan.
Veolia Water North America is the leading provider of comprehensive water and wastewater services to municipal and industrial customers, providing services to more than 14 million people in approximately 600 communities. The company is part of Veolia Water, the No. 1 water company in the world, serving more than 108 million customers. Veolia Water is the water division of Veolia Environnement (NYSE:VE) and (Paris Bourse:VIE), the largest environmental services company in the world, with more than 270,000 employees in about 64 countries and annual revenues of $30 billion. Visit the company's Web site at www.veoliawaterna.com.