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Press Release 21/04
IMCA PUBLISHES SAFETY STATISTICS
The latest safety statistics published by IMCA - the International Marine Contractors Association - are based on figures supplied by 31 IMCA contractor members covering approximately 200 million hours worked overall around the world during 2003 (an increase of some 2% over the previous year).
"Although only a lagging indicator of health, safety and environmental performance, safety statistics are nevertheless seen as providing a useful insight into the performance of a company in this area," explains IMCA's Chief Executive, Hugh Williams. "The purpose of the statistics is to record the safety performance of IMCA contractor members each year and to enable members to benchmark their performance. We also compare them with the figures published by organisations such as IADC (International Association of Drilling Contractors), OGP (International Association of Oil & Gas Producers) and IAGC (International Association of Geophysical Contractors).
"We have seen an interesting development since the IMCA Safety, Environment & Legislation (SEL) Core Committee developed leading indicators (of health, safety and environmental performance), which can be promoted to clients and adopted by members, in order to get away from the high reliance on lagging indicators, for example lost time injuries, as the arbiter of safety. Interestingly, the pleasing number of companies that supplied leading indicators for our 2003 survey would seem to have reaped the benefit of this commitment to safety, as their performance is generally better than the average." Further information on leading performance indicators is available to members in information note IMCA SEL 05/03.
Down to detail
The 2003 statistics show that fatalities increased, with five reported in 2003 (one offshore), as opposed to three in 2002. Despite the various initiatives to improve safely, the offshore fatal accident rate (FAR) increased to 5.96 from 4.83. This can be set against an increase in the offshore working hours - for FAR is calculated by the number of fatalities per 100,000,000 hours worked. There were 372 lost time injuries reported (184 offshore) that resulted in at least one day off work. This equates to over one every day.
"All participating members providing figures to the exercise reported their offshore data, where over 67 million hours were worked, compared with about 62 million hours in 2002," explains Hugh Williams. "This is an increase of about 8%. The offshore lost time injury frequency rate (LTIFR) has continued to show an improvement over the last four years, from 4.25 in 2000 to 2.96 in 2002 and reducing to 2.74 last year. This demonstrates that very definite benefits are being derived from safety initiatives."
Onshore there is an increase in hours over the past two years in relation to previous reports as a result of some IMCA members now including their onshore fabrication plants, which has led to the change from office-based onshore work to the different risks associated with heavy industrial operations. The onshore LTIFR has increased from 0.44 to 1.4. Twenty-three IMCA contractor members provided onshore data and the onshore-only LTIFR was based on 134 million hours worked in 2003.
"If we are to eliminate injuries, damage or near miss incidents, it is imperative that we focus on at-risk acts and unsafe conditions, which have not yet caused loss or harm but have the potential to," says Hugh Williams. "This is why safety guidance lies at the core of IMCA's work, and why we have published over 170 safety related guidance notes; publish regular safety flashes; safety pocket cards (six published so far and more in the pipeline); and a DVD on working at height; with a general safety awareness DVD scheduled for later this year. That holy grail of zero accidents is reachable, we just have to encourage everyone to try just that bit harder!"
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