Maersk Executive Safety Day
On Friday, 4 November, top executives and heads of safety met for the company’s first ever Maersk Executive Safety Day. “Safety makes us special,” the Group CEO reiterated on the day, underlining that safety needs the attention of the highest leadership.
Human errors can’t be accepted as a root cause of any safety incident. Instead, one needs to find root causes that boil down to things that can be fixed.
This was one of the main take-aways from the first ever Maersk Executive Safety Day held Friday, 4 November 2011, where top management and heads of safety met to discuss the Group’s ongoing safety journey.
“Safety makes us special,” the Group CEO Nils S. Andersen said and continued: “We discuss safety whenever we meet. While working here, you enter the tradition of taking care of one another.”
Nils S. Andersen thereby referred to the fact that safety is the first discussion point at any Executive Board meeting and defines the way Maersk runs its business. Something that became very visible during the safety day where the Executive Board members presented opportunities and challenges within their various business units.
BU’s can learn from one another
The oil business is in the business of controlling risk and safety is engrained into everything they do. The awareness that even a smaller incident can create severe havoc locally as well as globally is very high.
But even though the Group works within a number of heterogeneous business areas, the businesses are aligned in terms of values and can learn from one other.
“No one can doubt the engagement of our oil related businesses when it comes to safety. But this relentless engagement and focus on safety are needed in all of our business units. We need to take oil standards and introduce them to the rest of the Group,” Nils S. Andersen said.
Willingness to leave the facility
APM Terminals accounts for 80 percent of all fatalities that take place in the Group. “Our goal of zero incidents and zero fatalities will never change and our commitment to safety is higher than ever,” Kim Fejfer, CEO for APM Terminals said.
To address the challenges, APM Terminals has put forward an action plan, introduced a global safety day and developed personal safety plans. One of the key challenges for APM Terminals is that approximately 90,000 third party truck drivers enter APM Terminals’ vicinities daily.
“If we have a facility that can’t be brought up to standard, I’m willing to leave this facility,” Kim Fejfer said while underlining that even though APM Terminals is a leader within the terminal industry, they can learn from the rest of the Group.
“There is a great potential for synergies – by sharing we can improve. One take-along from this meeting is definitely that we can learn from one another,” Kim Fejfer said.
Pay special attention to
- Focus on smaller injuries that have a high potential to become serious.
- Find pre-cursors or unmitigated hazards that exist in the system.
- Keep on asking. Never be satisfied with a shallow answer to identify the root causes.
- Individual behavior is important. But it is too easy to say that the accident happened since “the guy didn’t follow the procedures.”
- One is in need of systems that enable the right behavior by creating a strong safety culture.
Source: Maersk