Dow Corning’s commitment to continuously improving its health and safety performance has won the company a national gold award for the second year running.
Dow Corning’s Barry site is one of a handful of companies across the UK to be given the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA) Occupational Health and Safety Award 2010 for its drive to protect the health and safety of its employees, visitors and neighbors.
Judged by a panel of RoSPA representatives, industry experts and the Health and Safety Executive (the UK’s health and safety inspectorate), Dow Corning’s application was supported by a five-year history of the site’s safety performance in relation to employee and contractor injury rates.
Peter Davis, occupational health and safety team leader at the Barry site, said that receiving a gold award for the second year running was a credit to the people working on site. “To gain this level of award proves that we have a sound health and safety management system and safety culture in place that’s helped drive continual improvement to reduce ill health, injuries and accidents,” he said.
“We believe the key to this is the introduction of a system that both employees and contractors use to report and deal with the potential hazards they identify as they go about their daily activities. This hazard awareness culture that we are still developing has provided the foundations for us to build on to reduce incidents and injuries even further. Our ultimate aim is to reach zero accidents and maintain this performance.”
The RoSPA Awards not only look at reducing the number of accidents and cases of ill-health at work but also ensure that organizations have in place good health and safety management systems. Dow Corning now needs to maintain a Gold Award status for between five to nine years to progress to Gold Medal status.