Accident prevention policy
The "zero accidents" policy
Accident prevention is one of our top priorities. Our goal is zero accidents both at workplace and during workrelated travel. In five years, our programme has led to a significant drop (50% in both cases) in the accident frequency and the accident severity rates. We have been monitoring the economic impact of our drive for zero accidents for several years with IFGE (French corporate governance institute). Since 2003, 70 subsidiaries have been tracked and significant correlations have been established between economic performance and safety. In 2007, the frequency rate in France was 13.98 and the severity rate 1.08. Alongside these encouraging results, the number of profit centres recording no lost-time accidents during the year rose from 42% in 2004 to 47% in 2007, a 12% improvement overall.
In 2007, we introduced an improvement clause together with the implementation of a workplace accident reporting system in the framework contracts signed with temporary worker recruitment companies. Only those companies committed to an active safety policy have been approved. Preventive measures initially introduced for VINCI employees have now been extended to cover temporary employees as well. These include safety tests (more than 5,000 temporary employees sat these tests in 2007 at Eurovia before being allowed onto the company’s worksites); 15-minute safety meetings held at least once a month; induction programmes for newcomers to boost their awareness of accident prevention and make sure they have the minimum knowledge required before being allowed to work on a site. To give just one example, the accident frequency rate involving temporary employees on VINCI Energies’ worksites in France was 31.68 in 2007.
The initial report reveals a discrepancy of 1 to 3 between the result for Group and temporary employees. Current measures aim to improve the reliability of this measuring tool, refi ne the risk analysis for each job and implement the appropriate accident prevention systems.
Synergy between the various business line accident prevention specialists has been stepped up so as to pool their initiatives. For example, the play “Watch out! Work in Progress!” is an innovative way of raising safety awareness that was created at Eurovia in 2006 (VINCI 2007 Innovation Award, Management category). It had been performed more than 70 times for the company’s 20,000 employees in France, from manual labourers to management, before being adapted by VINCI Construction France under the new name of “Worksite. Authorised personnel only!” Adopting the same approach as Eurovia, each performance is followed by a discussion.