Department Heads
within HSE at Qatalum
At the beginning of the
year, Qatalum signed the Mutual Aid Plan and the Mutual Aid Agreement from
Industrial Cities Directorate. To put the plan into practise, full scale Mutual
Aid Exercises were held at Carbon Paste Plant and at the Pitch Facility in the
Port. Positive feedback was received from the peer based observer group on both
occasions.
Qatalum Security section
has been successfully integrated into the HSE department making HSE and security
more closely associated.
In 2013, for the first
time ever, Qatalum assisted in judging the QP HSE Excellence Award and followed
this milestone by launching the Qatalum Contractor HSE
Forum.
Qatalum participated in
2013 QP Environment Fair. The theme was “Rainforest”. The target audience were
children and Qatalum set up games and gifts towards learning about the
theme.
Traffic management within
Qatalum was also addressed with a relocation of the staff parking area inside
the Qatalum plant, a change to the shuttle bus route on site and barricading and
demarcation of pedestrian walkways, respectively enhancing pedestrian safety on
site.
The end of the year saw
the integration of the Emergency Control Rooms (ECR) and Security Control Rooms
allowing for a single point of contact during emergencies. The control room is
located at the Qatalum Main gate.
2013 also saw the launch
of several campaigns and Initiatives spearheaded by HSE and January saw the
start of two Occupational Health programs, periodic medical evaluations and
prescriptive safety eyewear.
Occupational Hygiene
initiated, as an Improvement Project for HSE, an on-line gas testing facility.
This not only cut the cost of gas detector calibration but it eliminates
turn-around times of these critical devices.
Qatalum’s annual Hand
Injury Awareness Campaign was successfully launched by the CEO. Hand Injury
Awareness talks were hosted by the Heads of HSE to their respective operational
groups to reduce incidents especially amongst contractors. This initiative was
held following a decision by the Qatalum Joint HSE
Committee.
Occupational Health had a
Heart Awareness campaign, in which blood pressure, cholesterol and blood sugar
checks were conducted on 174 employees. The results showed varying levels of
wellness in the test subjects and mitigating advice was provided to those at
risk.
2013 saw the launch of our
first Physical Fitness Campaign. Eight teams from different nationalities and
departments enrolled in a basketball league.
Qatalum rolled out its
annual Heat Stress Awareness Campaign in the beginning of
summer.
The Emergency Management
Team initiated internal training which was successfully assessed by a team
comprising members from NAPT, MIC and QP Refinery.
For the future, HSE is
pursuing fulfilment of the ISO 14001 and OHSAS 18001 certification. A routine
gap analysis project is underway within Qatalum.
Full implementation of the
SAP based Incident Investigation and Reporting system is also underway which
will reduce, significantly, the gap between and incident, its reporting and a
response.
According to Qatalum’s HSE
manager, Deon Earle, “Qatalum HSE has had a successful year, we had a Total
Recordable Injury rate of 0.59 (week 50) compared to the KPI target of 0.85.
This indicates how serious Qatalum Management is about HSE and shows their
continued commitment to safety.”
Such confidence is
reinforced by Qatalum’s DCEO Khalid Larem. “We take great pride in being one of
the top performing smelters in the GCC with our current safety performance. We
encourage innovative environmental approaches within our smelter and are
uncompromising towards maintaining zero harm to people within our
boundaries.
‘Safety is the
responsibility of the individual towards others and all we do at Qatalum should
go a long way towards changing people’s perceptions towards preconceived ideas
about an unsustainable aluminium industry.”
