Health, Safety and Environment

A commitment to Health, Safety and Environment (HSE) is the hallmark of GHD’s approach to business. It means embedding HSE into every aspect of our operations, and protecting the safety of our people, our clients and the communities and the environments in which we operate.

We aim to maintain above industry practice in all aspects of Health, Safety and Environment, and observe all relevant statutes and other HSE requirements.

GHD continues to see significant improvements in HSE performance, as we develop our HSE culture from one of compliance management to fostering a strong ownership of HSE across our operations.

GHD’s internationally certified (AS4801 / OHSAS 18001 and ISO 14001) approach to HSE promotes industry leading practice in the management of HSE related risk related to GHD, both to our business and our projects.

The GHD HSE Management System includes an electronic compliance database and a HSE Index using leading indicators to drive organisational culture change and greater levels of management engagement.  Our people are trained in the system using face to face methods and also via our e-learning capability.  

Click to see GHD’s Health, Safety and Environment (HSE) Policy

Our health and safety management system was recognised by Safe Work Australia at the 2010 Safe Work Australia Awards where GHD was awarded "Best Workplace Health and Safety Management System - Private Sector". The award acknowledges demonstrated commitment to continual improvement, achieved through implementation of innovative solutions enabling an accessible integrated systems approach.

Our demonstrated commitment to HSE has enabled us to achieve the following:

• Integrate our Health and Safety Management System with our Environmental Management System
• Improved understanding of "safety in design" to benefit client
• 68% reduction in LTIFR (since 2007)
• 69% reduction in MTIs (since 2007)
• 69% reduction in TFR (since 2007)
• periods of 2.8 million, 3.5, 3.98 and 4.3 million hours LTI free  

GHD continues to make significant improvements in its approach to health and safety. The listed results are a combination of implementation of targeted strategies to better manage risk and  an instilled safety culture.

Achieving our goals enables us to produce better outcomes for our clients and ensures the safety of our people.

Incident Frequency Rates (based on 1 million hours worked)
MTIFR - Medical Treatment Injury Frequency Rate
LTIFR - Lost Time Injury Frequency Rate
TFR - Total Frequency Rate

Managing our environmental impacts

Key areas impacting our environmental management include our leased buildings, transport between offices and projects and on-site activities delivered on behalf of our clients. In this context, our environmental impacts are highlighted as water, electricity, paper and fuel consumption and our approach to waste management.

GHD continues to measure its greenhouse gas emissions annually. Those activities with greatest contribution to GHD's carbon footprint are:  Office electricity (26%), Base Building Energy (35%) and Air Travel (16%) – based on 2009/10 data.

Examples of our demonstrated commitment to environmental improvement include:

• Environmental impacts from site activities are identified, assessed and control measures implemented to minimise our impact on the environment
• Office Energy Plans developed for each of our Operating Centres to identify key performance improvement measures. In recognition of our energy efficiency achievements our Victorian Operating Centre was named as finalists in the 2011 Victorian City Switch Awards
• GHD has committed to pursuing new leases with buildings rated as 4* Green Star performance and above as part of our property management standards
• Improved air travel review and approval systems ensure all air travel is scrutinized for necessity prior to travel and use of teleconference and video calling is growing in acceptance. Further studies regarding multi-point videoconferencing for GHD offices is underway

GHD’s greenhouse gas emissions for 2009/10 were calculated at 6.8 tonnes of CO2 / FTE / - per annum. We continue to identify strategies that enable greater efficiencies both in our overall reduction of emissions and also calculation methodologies.  This is illustrated by our Operating Centres in Victoria, Newcastle and Sydney having invested in accredited GreenPower. Victoria now secures 50% of its electricity from renewable energy sources and 25% for Newcastle and Sydney. This provides the opportunity to reduce the greenhouse intensity of our energy consumption and improve visibility of consumption through automated online monitoring.

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