CATME conference success in Dubai

The second Cranes and Transport Middle East (CATME) conference was held at the Waldorf Astoria Palm Jumeirah in Dubai with more than 200 delegates in attendance.

Opening speaker Andrew Lees, Mammoet HSE-Q corporate director, set the scene for the day with a presentation focusing on the company’s health and safety strategy, centred on the use of SIF (Serious Incident & Fatalities) statistics.

He said a new approach to safety was implemented at the company because of the frequency of potentially serious incidents. “We knew we had to change our approach or the consequences would have been serious,” he explained.

Under the SIF programme, the company has eliminated a ’blame’ culture and identified the 12 most frequent causes of SIF incidents. Once these were identified, it rolled out an internal programme focusing on these areas. It has also created technical solutions to avoid situations that pose significant risk.

As a result, the rate of SIF incidents has reduced from 3.5 a month at the start of the programme to less than 0.5 a month by May 2018.

“We have improved our safety record, improved our equipment, and improved the industry”, said Lees. 

Ongoing initiatives in the programme include more emphasis for staff to report incidents and continued work on ensuring that employees understand the 12 main risk activities.

The one-day CATME conference is organised by International Cranes and Specialized Transport magazine and its publisher, KHL Group.

The conference presentations will be available for download from the conference website before the end of October.