MEP Awards: BK Gulf wins health and safety

James Keirle, BK Gulf SHEQ manager

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The BK Gulf Group won the Middle East Health and Safety Achievement Award at the MEP Awards 2010, held last night at the Westin in Dubai.

BK Gulf SHEQ manager James Keirle said "health and safety is a constant undertaking, from the grass-roots up, that involves communication and making it personal."

“The winner here is the focus shown by all entrants to make health and safety on construction sites their top most priority.

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This is excellent for all those who work on a construction site. Safety is a prerequisite, but one which has to be monitored, supported and proactively engaged with. All the entrants demonstrated this,” commented the judges.

The judges said the “clear winner” demonstrated robust safety, health and environmental strategies, including zero-harm initiatives and adopting measures such as mechanical grooved couplings.

In 2008 there were seven lost-time accidents (LTAs) and three major injuries within the BK Gulf group across the UAE. In 2009, the number of LTAs was reduced to six. The last of these three-day-plus LTAs was in October 2009. In the following 12 months, the group recorded zero LTAs, working in excess of 16.8 million man hours with over 8,000 personnel.

Keirle revealed that this record has since been broken as of November 2010, with over 20 million man hours having worked without incident to date.

“The BK Gulf group has continued to focus on reducing its accident and incident rate through the implementation of its zero-harm initiative, a combination of common-sense accident prevention and constant innovation,” the group said in its winning submission.

The BK Gulf group has also employed new and innovative technologies and equipment, and challenged established processes and techniques. Fire and associated hazards probably pose the greatest risk to employees within the MEP and construction sectors, and the group is now working in close collaboration with Victaulic, a leading manufacturer of mechanical grooved pipe joining systems.

This highly-effective partnership has removed 99% of all welding and hot work operations from BK Gulf project sites. The substitution of traditional joining methods for a Victaulic no-flame solution has virtually eliminated some of the potentially greatest work-site dangers such as tanks, torches and lead lines.

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