Employee Safety
FY15 was a year of continued commitment and excellent safety outcomes for Transurban. Our commitment to safety is evident through the inclusion of safety key performance indicators (KPI) in our Short Term Incentive plan in which most employees are participants. This KPI incorporates both lead and lag indicators.
In FY15, we had zero lost time or recordable injuries across all regions, an improvement on prior years, and we continued to improve the way we track hazards, near misses and high-potential incidents.
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FY13 |
FY14 |
FY15 |
|
Australia | |||
|
Lost Time Injury Frequency Rate (LTIFR) |
3.49 |
2.10 |
0.00 |
|
Recordable Injury Frequency Rate (RIFR) |
3.49 |
3.88 |
0.00 |
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United States | |||
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Lost Time Injury Frequency Rate (LTIFR) |
0.00 |
0.00 |
0.00 |
|
Recordable Injury Frequency Rate (RIFR) |
0.00 |
2.20 |
0.00 |
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Figures above are for Transurban employees and do not include contractors. Recordable injuries include Lost Time Injuries and Medical Treatment Injuries, as defined below. Lost Time Injury: work-related injury or illness which results in a person losing one or more full shifts from work after the date of injury. Medical Treatment Injury: work-related incident requiring medical treatment, other than first aid | |||
Of special note in FY15 was the safety record of our newest US asset, the 95 Express Lanes, which had been under construction for more than two years and in operation since December 2014. The asset has maintained a record of zero lost time injuries.
This includes a total of 4.2 million work hours without a lost time injury—the entire length of the construction phase—for a project which had approximately 1,500 people working each day in an active construction zone. The 95 Express Lanes team remains diligently focused on the safety of the road, which is now operating.
Employee safety awareness
Injury and incident rates are lag indicators and are only part of the picture in monitoring workplace safety. Proactive identification and discussion of potential safety hazards are other key objectives in maintaining a safe workplace.
All employees are encouraged to record frequent ‘HSE Observations’, hazards, incidents and recognise good safety behaviour via our central incident reporting system. These are key leading indicators for monitoring our safety performance and encouraging proactive prevention of incidents.
People leaders across the business have minimum requirements to record a monthly safety observation, in order to drive genuine and open concern for the safety and welfare of everyone in our workplace including employees, contractors and visitors. The completion of monthly safety observations is included in people leaders’ KPIs, which are directly linked to remuneration and incentives.
Customer Safety
Road crashes unfortunately contribute to death and injury across Australia and the United States every year. This means protecting the millions of motorists that travel on our roads is paramount. While we operate safe and efficient networks, we recognise there will always be opportunities to improve. We aspire to fatality-free roads.
Road Safety Committee
The Transurban Road Safety Committee was launched in July 2014. The Committee’s key objective is to provide guidance and direction on road safety while providing stewardship of Transurban’s road safety strategies. The Committee meets with representation from the Executive Committee, Assets, Delivery and Health, Safety and Environment (HSE) teams.
The Committee is also overseeing the development of an organisation-wide Customer and Roadways Safety Policy and Road Safety Strategy and Action Plan, with the HSE team supporting these with initiatives across the business.
Road safety is also a standing agenda item at Executive Committee meetings throughout the year.
Road safety performance
Road conditions and safety are monitored by traffic control centres and response teams for each asset that provide rapid response in the event of a crash, traffic disruption or other incident.
Transurban benchmarks its road safety performance using a Road Injury Crash Index (RICI), incorporating the total number of injury crashes and total vehicle travel on individual assets and across the Group.
The FY15 Road Injury Crash Index across all Transurban assets was 5.52 injury crashes per 100 million vehicle kilometres travelled. This includes the addition of Queensland assets and US assets in FY15, which were not included in road safety figures for the FY14 Sustainability Report. This result represents an increase on the previous year RICI of 4.56[1].
This rate of injury crashes on Transurban roads remains significantly below that of the broader Australian and US road network, which experience approximately 3 to 4 times higher rates of injury crashes per kilometre travelled.
In total there were 275 injury crashes on Transurban’s roads in FY15, including Queensland assets and the new 95 Express Lanes in the Group total for the first time. The trend in total injury crashes on Transurban roads can be seen below, in particular the impact of increased vehicle kilometres from additional assets.
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Road Injury Crash Index definition: serious road injury (requiring medical treatment or where emergency medical care is required, other than first aid) crashes per 100 million vehicle kilometres travelled. Incidents where an individual was assessed at the scene but then released are not classified as a serious injury crash, as some of these are precautionary measures. |
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Unfortunately, there were four fatal road accidents on our operating assets during FY15. This included two vehicle crashes and two incidents involving pedestrians on motorways.
We have continued to make operational improvements to enhance safety on our roads such as electronic speed and lane control, specialist tunnel safety systems including vehicle height detection, and automatic detection of incidents to ensure a rapid response.
Transurban also continued with its commitment to complete investigations of all High Potential Incidents during the year. A High Potential Incident is any incident that has the potential to cause irreversible harm. Event can be used interchangeably with incident. One hundred per cent of High Potential Incidents were investigated and closed out for FY15, with the teams ensuring investigations, communications and corrective actions were promptly taken.
Road safety awareness
Beyond our own efforts to manage safe motorways, we also seek to raise awareness among our workforce and customers about the importance of road safety.
In FY15, we supported the United Nations Global Road Safety Week which raises awareness about the impact of road traffic injuries and promotes action around the major causes. The UN notes that road traffic injuries are a major public health problem and road traffic deaths remain high, with approximately 1.24 million lives lost worldwide in 2010. This year’s theme was children and road safety and we participated with various initiatives across our assets.
Our road safety initiatives for FY15 included:
- We supported the ‘Shine a Light on Road Safety’ and ‘Sarah Group Yellow Ribbon’ campaigns and also promoted them to the public by lighting the Bolte Bridge in Melbourne and Sir Leo Hielscher Bridges (formerly Gateway Bridges) in Brisbane in yellow
- We displayed messages on our on-road Variable Message Boards supporting both Yellow Ribbon and #SaveKidsLives to build awareness among motorists
- Road Trauma Support Services CEO Cameron Sinclair gave a presentation to our operations team, key executives and leaders at Balston Street in Melbourne to share his organisation’s experience with road safety
- Our Queensland business continued its Drive Safe education and awareness program and participated in the Queensland Government’s Join the Drive to Save Lives State-wide Coalition along with 14 other corporations in Queensland
- On 29 May, we supported ‘Fatality Free Friday’ in Brisbane by reminding our customers to concentrate on driving safely and consciously changing their behaviour. Activities also included lighting the Sir Leo Hielscher Bridges in orange and hosting events for staff and state and local government elected representatives along our road network
- Distracted Driving Month took place in Virginia in April with employees and customers reminded to pay attention while driving
- Work Zone Awareness Week took place in Virginia in March, raising awareness of safe driving through highway work zones and construction sites
The I-95 gate and signage enhancement program, which improved effectiveness and overall safety of the gates and lane reversal system. Since adding reflective flags onto the gates, daily gate strikes has reduced from 3-4 per day to 1 or fewer – more than a 50% reduction
Defensive driving skills for our CityLink Key Accounts
In November 2014, our Victorian team hosted a number of our largest freight and logistics customers from Linfox, Toll, LeasePlan, Orix, Australia Post and Hanson Construction at a defensive-driving skills training course. Run by Murcotts Driving Excellence, the course combined two of our primary focus areas - safety and customers. The event was an excellent opportunity to enhance customer relationships as well as provide some hands-on driver safety skills.
The Murcotts team gave a safety briefing and covered driving hazards and risk assessments before participants took to the track. The day gave the group greater insight into their driving behaviour as well as defensive driving skills and better hazard perception.
Participants were extremely positive about the event and agreed they learnt a great deal about driving technique. A number of our FY15 community grants and partnerships also had a focus on road safety and driver education.
Incident response
Our roads have significantly lower rates of incident and injury compared to the broader public roads network due to factors including a high level of monitoring, maintenance, on-road communication and incident response. When incidents do occur, we aim to respond as soon as possible to maintain the safety of customers and the continued operation of the road. Rapid response is crucial to ensure driver safety on such high-occupancy, high-speed roadways and tunnels.
In many cases, our teams are the first to respond to on-road incidents, and if necessary they send out response vehicles or coordinate with emergency services.
Safety is a primary focus for employees in our traffic control rooms and on our assets. This was highlighted recently on CityLink when two incidents saw our operations teams provide swift assistance to two of our customers in distress. Both incidents involved a CityLink Surveillance and Incident Response Officer making initial contact with motorists that had pulled over on CityLink. Immediate ambulance assistance was arranged for one motorist, and for the other, we directed emergency services to the motorist’s location.
These are just two examples of the many cases our operational teams have faced as they strive to ensure our roads and customers are as safe as possible.
[1] In FY15 Transurban adjusted the way it compiles the Group-wide RICI. The FY14 Sustainability Report disclosed a Group RICI of 5.16 for FY14 that was based on a straight numerical average of the RICI of all assets. Internal reporting and the FY15 Sustainability Report now uses a true aggregate RICI based on total crashes and total Vehicle Kilometres Travelled (VKT) of all assets, which better accounts for the weighted contribution of each asset. The re-stated FY14 RICI also includes the 495 Express Lanes which were not included at the time of the original FY14 Sustainability Report.