BlueScope’s annual Zero Harm Excellence awards recognise the Company’s strength in health and safety. 

Each year the awards show how our employees’ care for each other, combined with innovative thinking, results in a broad range of initiatives that help make our workplaces safer.   Employees’ contribution and commitment to safety is so much a part of the way we work at BlueScope.

Leadership, Participation and Engagement Excellence - recognises individual or team excellence in leadership in improving health and safety in the workplace

Lysaght Vietnam Bien Hoa site’s Lean safety program:  a structured program encouraging safety
initiatives which make step changes to build a safe, clean and organised factory, but also increase engagement and ownership across the site.  Since June 2019 the program has delivered over 28 safety initiatives, with five significant projects.

with a commendation to New Caledonia’s Safety Challenge:  developed to help maintain
employee engagement in safety.  Four teams each worked on separate projects to take a new approach to safety in the workplace which they then presented to their colleagues.  As well as generating innovative safety programs, through the Challenge employees had the opportunity to see a different perspective of safety at work.

Health, Wellbeing and Community Excellence - recognises a team’s commitment to the health and wellbeing of their people and the community

North Star BlueScope Steel Home Safety Team: The program began in 2003, and today over 20% of the workforce participate in non-work related safety conversations (also known as iROC), including almost 500 iROC conversations in 2019.  The home safety team has sponsored a number of events to promote safety outside of work including electrical circuit breaker assessments; battery give-away; Family Day at the zoo with an FBI agent talking about cyber security; a  casino night about fire safety, and winter car kits for employees including strobe light, window punch, hand warmers, blankets, and traction device.

Health and Safety Innovation of the Year - recognises development of plant, equipment, engineering and/or infrastructure to enhance health and safety

Joint winners: 

BlueScope China Isolation Points:  A key task in the monthly shutdown program is to put safety pins into physical isolation holes on all equipment.  Issues have arisen wih this process:  the 189 safety pins on each Metal Coating Line are easy to miss, operators do not always understand the English descriptions, and it is difficult to record the required information.  The innovative solution - pasting a barcode label beside each isolation pin hole. Operators scan the barcode after inserting\pulling out the safety pin, and the data is transferred to a computer system where the team can check that all the isolation points have been covered.

North Star BlueScope Steel Robot installation at Electric Arc Furnace:   Previously the Melt Shop used equipment called Catfis for both furnaces. They were unreliable and required daily work to keep them functioning. When they failed, operators had to work nearer the furnace at flat bath to take a temperature. This location carried most risk as a water leak on a panel could cause a large explosion. Today the robots use an automated sleeve rack which allows them to autonomously load sleeves, check robot probe alignments, and bend probes back to spec that may become bent in the temperature taking process. Operators can safely load a single shift worth of sleeves without having to lock any equipment out, or place themselves in any pinch points.  And the operator is exposed to a much smaller opening which greatly reduces blast exposure and steel/slag splash. This also improves furnace efficiency by reducing the heat lost during the temperature taking process.

Best Solution to a Health and Safety Risk - recognises innovation, implementation and or design of systems, processes or procedures to improve health and safety

Australian Steel Products – Port Kembla Steelworks No. 24 boiler burner replacement:   A cross functional team used local maintenance and engineering expertise to develop a design to eliminate coke oven gas spud burners and replace them with annular burner. The project achieved cost savings of $160,000 and met its aims to eliminate the gas exposure risk while disconnecting spud hoses, the manual handling risk removing the spuds and cleaning, and the environmental risk of cleaning spuds and scrolls.  This initiative also won the inaugural People’s Choice award category. 

Supply Chain Partnership Excellence - recognises positive partnerships where BlueScope and customers, contractors or suppliers have worked together to improve health and safety

Australian Steel Products and K&S Freighters Load restraint simulator:  Drivers are typically responsible for load restraint; which carries a risk of injury. K&S Freighters, in consultation with BlueScope risk engineers, developed innovative training units to protect drivers, improve understanding of clamping force and safe working load, teach them how to spot common faults, and reduce loads shifting in transit. Seven training units have been deployed to major depots in Australia and New Zealand. The units are portable and can be transported for training at other sites. The equipment is highly effective as a new and practical way to learn load restraint theory which has typically been limited to classroom settings. 

Most Outstanding Business Unit - recognises a BlueScope business for highest performance in balanced scored method using lead and lag data:  BlueScope China