Case study: Marafiq
Company
Marafiq
Size
1610 employees
Location
Yanbu, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
Sector
Energy (Power and Water Utility)
Marafiq is the utility lifeline to the industrial cities of Jubail and Yanbu. The company’s operations include: production of potable and process water from sea water, supplying sea water for cooling, production of power for domestic and industrial use and the treating of both industrial and sanitary waste water.
Key fact summary
- Culture survey used to improve systems implemented
- Step by step guidelines for effective implementation of occupational health and safety management systems
- Accidents reduced by 47% from 2012 recorded accidents
Products
- British Safety Council member since 2012
- Utilised Culture Change programme
- Carried out Safety Management System Evaluation
- Utilised Safety Leadership training
- Utilised NEBOSH International General Certificate in
- Occupational Health and Safety
- Undertook a Five Star Occupational Health and Safety Audit
- Won a Sword of Honour Award 2014
Business issue
- To change the attitude of employees in assuming assigned occupational health and safety responsibilities
- To strengthen and empower their employees with world class occupational health and safety management systems.
- Most importantly to ensure effective implementation of the new system
What happened?
- Internal and external audits reveal no major deficiency in the areas of occupational health and safety in Yanbu
- High level of behaviour driven leadership instilled in operations and management contractors.
- British Safety Council demonstrated leadership in improving Marafiq’s safety performance, which ultimately transformed the organisation, enabling it to realise its dream of being awarded the “Sword of Honour”. To reach to a level high enough to achieve the Award, the entire team worked exhaustively in 2013 and accomplished several milestones, such as:
- Conducted extensive occupational, health and safety (OHS) and fire training programmes utilising 5,345 training days during 2013 and 2,432 days in 2014
- Each department was assigned an OHS champion with a deputy who completed a series of extensive occupational, health and safety management systems (OHSMS) training for 45 days
- The OHS champions passed on OHSMS information to employees in their departments
- Quantitative evaluation of OHSMS awareness level on a monthly basis
- Tracking the effectiveness of OHSMS implementation through key performance indicators (KPIs)
- Effective management of permit to work authorisation process through class room training, face to face testing and the issue of authorisation cards coupled with timely renewal
- Conducted several emergency drills within each department in addition to company level drills.
- Occupational health and safety policy statement was reviewed as recommended by British Safety Council with specific emphasis on responsibility of executive management, mangers and line mangers
- Managers now express their safety ownership
Impact
- Employees involvement in occupational health and safety programs especially in hazard identification and risk mitigation has been raised to a phenomenal positive change
- The British Safety Council training system has lit a spark in Marafiq occupational health and safety training modules.