Ensuring Health & Safety in our Operations

We place safety as one of our highest priorities. It is one of our core values and encompasses all aspects of our business, from providing a safe and reliable electricity supply to our customers, to ensuring the highest safety standards in our workplace. We foster a culture that promotes employee wellness and raises health and safety awareness, not only internally but also with our customers and business partners. Our operations are guided by our Health and Safety Policy.

Our Health and Safety Board, which is chaired by the Group Managing Director and comprises senior management team members, oversees all health and safety issues and ensures strong commitment at all levels of management and employees. The Health and Safety Board oversees Divisional Health and Safety Committees, Departmental Health and Safety Committees, and Health and Safety Sub-committees, comprising employees and contractors, to promote health and safety.

Our Commitment

As part of our ongoing efforts in continuous improvement, our Safety Management System has been aligned with the requirements of the OHSAS 18001 standard. We are also signatories to the Occupational Safety Charter and the Workplace Hygiene Charter, launched by the Labour Department in 1997 and the Occupational Safety and Health Council & Labour Department in 2003 respectively. To ensure the safe operation of our facilities, we have adopted the PAS55 certified asset management system that enables us to closely monitor our equipment operation.

We place equal importance on ensuring that all our business partners operate under the same safety principles and we require that they adhere to the same standards on health and safety. We work to ensure effective communication with our partners to achieve high safety performance of all parties.

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With the support of HK Electric, the Fire Services Department carries out a high-angle rescue exercise at Lamma Winds.

Safety Comes First

Planning for ContingencyA disruption to our operations will have a significant impact on the electricity supply to our customers. To ensure that we manage the risk of any emergency situation and to avoid any major disruptions, we have developed a Crisis Management Plan. In addition, our System Control Centre has been designed with a redundancy principle to reduce the probability of emergency situations and we continuously monitor our risks through reliability reviews, cyber-security reviews, and risk assessments. We conduct regular emergency drills with concerned government departments to train our employees on the necessary procedures and identify areas for improvement. As an example of emergency preparedness, we have influenza pandemic precautionary measures in place in case of an outbreak of disease.

Workplace Health & Safety Our employees’ health and safety is a key priority in our business. A number of measures and initiatives are in place to provide a healthy, safe and comfortable working environment for them. We conduct monthly disinfectant treatments and half-yearly air-duct cleaning of the air-conditioning systems at all our premises to ensure safe indoor air quality. In recognition of our efforts, we received the “Excellent Class” Indoor Air Quality certification for the seventh consecutive year. We emphasize the importance of health and our physical exercise programme is now in its third year where our employees are encouraged to participate every day.

As a caring employer, we subsidise flu vaccinations for our employees and our Influenza Pandemic Prevention Committee has put in place a contingency plan and measures for the prevention of swine influenza, avian influenza and other related illnesses. Health and safety training courses and other safety activities such as the inter-company and regional Safety Quiz competitions are important means of keeping our employees informed and involved.

In 2011, five minor disabling injuries were reported, down from eight in 2010 and meeting the target for reducing the Disabling Injury Frequency Rate (DIFR). However, one of the incidents resulted in a longer day lost and hence a higher Disabling Injury Severity Rate (DISR). In any case, even one injury is too many, and for that reason all incidents were thoroughly investigated and assessed in order to identify preventive measures, which were then put in place, along with necessary training.

We expect all business partners to comply with our Code of Practice for Suppliers, which outlines our health and safety and environmental protection standards together with ethical, human and labour rights requirements. We require that all our contractors provide their employees with appropriate health and safety training and we provide additional training to our contractor and subcontractor employees as needed. Examples of our safety training courses which are accredited by the Labour Department of the Hong Kong SAR Government include gas welding safety, suspended working platform operator and confined spaces certified workers and competent persons.

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Fire drill at Lamma Power Station.

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Experience Sharing We believe that training is critical in order to achieve high standards of health and safety and we take a proactive approach in raising awareness in our workforce, the community and business partners. In 2011, eight health talks were introduced under the employee wellness seminar series, covering topics such as work-life balance and managing family relationships.

It is vital to us that our contractors follow the same high standards of health and safety in the workplace. We organised a forum on Safety, Health and Environment (SHE) at Lamma Power Station (LPS) to share good practices among contractors.

The HK Electric team at the Occupational Safety & Health Quiz 2011.

A SHE Day was also organised at LPS to promote SHE culture and enhance the spirit of collaboration. Both functions were attended by contractors and guests from the Government and the construction industry. Other initiatives in 2011 included the selection of SHE Stars from contractors and the presentation of SHE Ambassador Walk Souvenirs in recognition of good SHE performance, as well as regular SHE Circle Meetings to promote interaction with contractors.

In terms of community outreach, in 2011 we organised seven talks for our customers on the safe and efficient use of electricity and we provided advice on the “Safety Tips on Using Electricity” section of our “Electricity@Home” website.