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There is a reason that every meeting at DTE begins with a safety message: The health and safety of people is our top priority – for our employees, our customers and everyone in the communities we serve. Nothing is more important. All employees know they have the power – and the responsibility – to stop work any time they feel safety may be compromised.
Safety committees connect the organization
Helping to guide safety decisions, improve processes, raise concerns and foster communication are multiple levels of safety committees that span the organizational structure of the company. The committees meet monthly and consist of frontline employees, union leaders and company leaders. Office employees participate as well, because even though their injury risk is not as great as those who work in the field and in our plants, office injuries do happen, and we want to do what we can to prevent them.
All safety committees are responsible to communicate information both up and down the safety committee structure to promote sharing best practices and learning. At a minimum, each safety committee reviews all significant or recordable injuries and near misses. Safety committees also review incident corrective actions to ensure that proper root causes and sustainable corrective actions are identified and implemented to prevent reoccurrence.
Our union partners are active participants and vital to our safety success. Union representatives co-chair all levels of safety committees and are part of the teams that investigate safety incidents within the company.
Pre-Job Briefs focus on safety hazards
Every job that presents a hazard potential requires a pre-job brief (PBJ) before the job is performed. PJBs are discussions among those about to do the work. During this time, risks and hazards are identified along with actions to mitigate them. PJBs make sure everyone is on the same page about who’s doing what, what procedures will be followed, what personal protective equipment is required and what might happen that would cause the team to stop work and reassess the conditions.
Company leaders conduct safe worker observations (SWO) at least once per week to verify people are following safety protocols and provide coaching, if necessary. The observations are structured to also create an opportunity for employees to raise safety concerns and offer suggestions as part of a two-way dialogue with their leaders.
Tracking safety performance
DTE tracks a system of metrics to gauge health and safety performance and detect gaps. Metrics include OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) recordable injuries, incidents requiring first aid treatment, and near misses. The latter metric is especially effective at identifying conditions or procedures that may need revising to prevent a future injury. DTE also tracks all vehicle accidents regardless of severity. To further emphasize safety, all business units incorporate safety metrics into their performance goals.
Throughout the year, front-line leaders conduct safety stand downs company-wide with all employees. Typically based on seasonal hazards or incidents that require added focus. Individual business units are encouraged to schedule ad hoc safety meetings and communications as needed.
Life critical activities
In 2014, DTE established a series of Life Critical jobs that present the greatest risk of a fatality. These include:
- Control of Hazardous Energy
- Hot Work
- Confined Space Entry
- Trenching and Excavation
- Lifting and Supporting Loads
- Working at Heights
- Vehicle Safety
- Exposure Control: COVID-19
People performing Life Critical activities receive extra training, focus and evaluation. They are the highest priority of our SWOs and have separate observation criteria and stop-work scenarios.
Maintaining a safety culture
The DTE Safety Maturity Model (SaMM) is a program designed to advance the company’s safety culture. It provides the structure for our safety operating system. Where traditional safety programs focus on awareness or compliance, SaMM focuses on the development of safety capabilities across the enterprise. It consists of 30 attributes, including hazard recognition, corrective actions, emergency drills and safety concern escalation, that are based on the Occupational Health and Safety Management System as established by the American National Standards Institute.
The SaMM process operates on a two-year cycle, with an assessment conducted by the corporate SaMM team in year one, and a self-assessment by each organization itself in year two. The self-assessment is designed to promote development of safety maturity within the organization. As part of the assessments, each attribute is rated to produce an overall score that allows organizations and the enterprise to track safety culture and identify areas for improvement.
We also intensely focus on industrial hygiene. In addition to thorough training about hazards like lead, mercury and asbestos, certain employees – due to the nature of their jobs – receive periodic precautionary testing to ensure they are not absorbing unhealthy levels of harmful substances. During the pandemic our Corporate Safety organization and its industrial hygiene team are playing a critical role in assisting DTE’s virus response to help keep our employees, customers and communities safe from COVID-19.
Supplier safety
Our suppliers are held to similar safety standards. In 2018, DTE introduced a safety program in which contractors must participate to remain or become business partners with DTE. They are required to maintain a certain level of safety and report their safety metrics in Avetta, a tracking system used by companies globally to monitor and audit performance. DTE works with contractors individually and as a group to help them improve their safety culture and processes.
By working together with all our partners, we can help ensure the health and safety of our coworkers, contractors, families, friends and communities. That’s our number-one priority as we continue our progress toward becoming the best-operated energy company in North America and a force for growth and prosperity in the communities where we live and serve.
Vehicle safety
Our workers, and their fellow motorists, are now safer behind the wheel thanks to a company-wide focus on vehicle safety. In 2019, we reduced vehicle accidents by 5 percent from the previous year.
These reductions are supported by a Vehicle Safety Committee that uses GPS data to find behaviors like speeding, hard breaking and rapid acceleration that create the potential for vehicle accidents.
Our most common accidents in 2019 involved getting hit by another moving vehicle. The second most common type of accident was hitting a stationary object – things like light poles, guardrails, and trees.
Coaching, communication, training, and observations helped us reduce the distracted driving that caused these accidents and recognize employees who embrace our safe driving commitment.
In 2020, we are targeting an additional five percent reduction in vehicle accidents. We are also investigating in-cab technology that gives drivers audible alerts if they take their eyes off the road.
Additional new technology is ensuring our trucks are safer before they get on the road. Early in 2019, we began deploying an Electronic Driver Vehicle Inspection Report mobile app. The app allows our fleet vehicle drivers to use their smart phones to easily complete a safety inspection list and a vehicle walk around before they start their shift.
This technology helps us remain compliant with transportation safety regulations. More importantly, it keeps drivers safer by improving awareness of the vehicle and nearby objects and ensures brakes are other items are safety tested before our fleet vehicles hit local roadways.