Adewale Sanyaolu
A major milestone has been recorded in the fabrication sector as Samsung Heavy Industries Nigeria (SHIN) has announced the attainment of the significant health and safety milestone of 1,200 days with no lost time injuries.
The feat was reached at SHI-MCI, Africa’s largest ship fabrication and integration yard located in Lagos. This achievement is reflective of SHIN’s intense focus on ensuring the health and safety of its entire workforce through significant investment in training and oversight.
The ship building industry is potentially a very dangerous one with heavy machinery in operation, explosive gases used for welding and high temperatures in enclosed spaces. This means that there are many challenges to ensuring the health and safety of a large and diverse workforce.
Senior Health, Safety and Environment (HSE) Manager of SHIN Bala Adjuya, said “The main challenge for Samsung is that we have many employees who have never worked in the industry before. So it is hard to instill an awareness of health and safety. But once you train them, it becomes a skill for life.
In addition to continuous staff training, every worksite is investigated for hazards, mitigation measures implemented and active HSE personnel are constantly present onsite to ensure safety protocols are followed,’’.
Adjuya explained that, Samsung Heavy Industries set itself a target of 0.9 per cent LTIs on the Egina FPSO Project in Nigeria. LTI is a HSE term which means “lost time injury”, which is an injury sustained by an employee that will lead to loss of productive work time. Even one minor incident will result in a complete reset of the LTIs counter to 0. As of 25th March 2019, SHI-MCI has achieved 1,207 days of no LTIs. In order to achieve this challenging target, SHI-MCI follows a rigorous process.