Press Release /10

IMCA PUBLISHES SAFETY STATISTICS FOR 2009

Newly published safety statistics for 2009, drawn from 152 contractor members of the International Marine Contractors Association (IMCA), is based on 602 million man-hours of work overall (474 million man-hours of them offshore). Onshore data was provided by 112 of 152 companies (74%).

"In terms of man-hours worked, this is less than the 2008 figures, although the number of contributors has increased roughly in line with membership, rising from 129 in 2008 to 152 in 2009," says Hugh Williams, Chief Executive of IMCA. "We produce an annual report of safety statistics (covering fatalities and injuries) supplied by members".

"Safety statistics are a useful insight into the performance of a company and industry sector in the areas of health, safety and environment. The purpose of these statistics is to record the safety performance of IMCA contractor members each year and to enable IMCA members to benchmark their performance," he explains. "Each member submits their own statistics on a voluntary basis, and these are anonymised and combined into the whole report. Each company is then told which they are on the anonymised list so they can compare their performance against the whole group, companies of comparable size and against other statistics published by similar industry bodies. Statistics were provided by 152 companies and organisations, representing a significant fraction of the marine contractor membership. They come from all 5 of IMCA's geographical sections and all 4 technical divisions. Forty-six companies and organisations took part for the first time. We would like to thank all who took part in this important annual benchmarking exercise."

The headline statistics are as follows:

The headline statistics are as follows: Overall lost time injury frequency rate (overall LTIFR) 0.67 Overall number of lost time injuries (LTI) 395 Overall total recordable injury rate (TRIR) 2.54 Overall fatal accident rate (FAR) 1.00 ‘Fall on the same level’ was the largest direct cause of LTIs in 2009 contributing 29% of the incidents. An analysis of direct causes of LTIs on a regional basis shows amongst North American contributors that ‘muscle stress and repetitive movement’ was the most common cause.

The headline results are similar to last year and indicate that industry efforts have continued to hold incident rates at a lower level than in the past. However, achieving another step change downwards towards an even better result is proving tough to all concerned and thus there still remains more to do.

IMCA SEL (Safety Environment & Legislation) committee undertakes a review of those statistics every year to see if there are trends which identify further actions for the committee.