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Working on the road can be a dangerous activity. Accidents and near misses regularly occur during roadwork in the Netherlands; sometimes it is only a hair’s breadth away. Road construction company VeenIX wants to understand these risks in order to learn from them. With the help of employees and Safety Dashboard, VeenIX is charting the risks.

On behalf of Rijkswaterstaat, contractor VeenIX is working on the widening and sunken construction of the A9 between the Badhoevedorp and Holendrecht junctions. The work is part of the Schiphol-Amsterdam-Almere (SAA) road widening project.

“With such a large construction project, from design to execution, it comes down to safety,” says Gerrit Schulting HSSE manager at VeenIX (health, safety, security and environment). Occupational safety and environmental safety are also part of his responsibilities. Gerrit states: ‘There are not only safety risks on the construction site. We also see risks in the interface with the public environment. We are working in the middle of other buildings and on the highway, near Schiphol Airport and the waterways. ‘

Prior to the work, VeenIX prepares a safety plan. Part of this plan is a risk inventory and evaluation that we draw up together with Rijkswaterstaat. This is followed by a check on site to see if everything we put on paper inside is also correct outside. So we do everything we can to work safely,’ says Schulting.

Despite the proper preparations, it can of course happen that a risky situation arises during work. For that reason, it is very important for VeenIX to gain insight into the safety risks, Schulting says. That is why VeenIX recently started working with Safety Dashboard. ‘Safety stands or falls with reporting incidents. We want to fully motivate people on construction sites to report risky situations, in order to take the right measures together and to prevent reoccurrence.’

Mr. Schulting says he likes the system. ‘We now have about a hundred active users. The goal is to eventually have 15,000. Everyone who accesses this site over time will also automatically gain access to Safety Dashboard. In this initial phase, our emphasis is on making reports and linking them to the right person responsible. Soon we will also add the action module so that employees can see what happens to their report.’

VeenIX wants to make employees aware that reporting risky situations makes sense. ‘We call on people to report because it makes us better. The strength of Safety Dashboard is that it clearly shows, visible to everyone, where the biggest safety gains can be made. We already work with the toolbox modules, recording meetings, the KPIs and workplace inspections. We are already seeing the added value of this. For example, supervisors no longer need to carry piles of paper around the construction site during their work inspection rounds, and they no longer need to archive those papers. All the information is automated in Safety Dashboard. That’s a real plus’
Gerrit also cites the overview and ease of use as key strengths of the system. ‘I enter targets in the system, and at the end of the month I only have to press the button for a complete overview of the safety indicators that are important to us.’
With the ‘Safety for all’ program that VeenIX and Rijkswaterstaat are implementing together, the partners are working on safety. ‘Part of that is the safety culture,’ says Schulting. ‘We want to move away from blaming and shaming; we want to move toward an open culture in which employees can talk about safety in an accessible way. Safety Dashboard helps with that; the data in the system is really relevant for this, the makers deserve kudos for that. I can report with it very easily, and we can use it to show that we need to take steps in a certain area. We believe: the more reports, the better. Only with the help of data can we improve, change and work more safely. That is a change in thinking, which we are working on every day.’

Suitable for medium size, single sited, companies to Global multi sited companies.

We offer standard packages packed with pre-set filter options and sensible KPI’s for measuring your performance. We also can offer customised versions tailored to your way of working. We offer a personal service and you will have your own safety dashboard project manager to help guide you through the implementation.