Jeff Rigby talks about the strategic focus of the urban water industry to improve safety performance.
We spoke to Jeff Rigby, Managing Director, Western Water at the WSAA Water Utility Chairs and MDs Symposium in Canberra on Tuesday 10 September 2019.
Transcript:
Safety is paramount for our industry. A lot of the work activities that we do as a sector are very high risk activities, and in many cases those activities are performed by private sector partners that are critical to the delivery of our services. So moving forward, we're seeing a need to improve our performance, not just in terms of our own utility businesses, the members of WSAA, but also the crucial sector that supports us in our everyday business.
We've taken a strong focus strategically as a sector around improving the safe work environment for our staff, reducing rates of harm, which from benchmarking we've seen are higher than they should be. And also providing a workplace that's free of harm, not just in terms of physical injury, but that is also psychologically safe for our people so that they can feel safe in coming to work and supported 24/7 as integral members of our teams and valued members of staff.