Health & Safety

We are committed to the highest standards of health and safety across our operations for employees, visitors, contractors, sub-contractors and partners. Our vision and policies are part of our Integrated Management System. They are implemented through our processes and procedures to ensure we maintain and continuously improve a healthy and safe working environment.
Our practices comply with the international standard on Occupational Health and Safety Management ISO 45001:2018 for which we continued our certification in 2021.

We met our objectives for 2021 of having zero fatalities and a lost time injury frequency of less than 0.13. During the year, 82 accident and incident reports were submitted (2020: 62). The increase in reported accidents and incidents could be attributed to increased awareness to report accidents and incidents. From these reports, 40 related to accidents and incidents involving employees (2020: 44) where 22 of these occurred at an office location, 16 at out-of-office locations and 2 were traffic related. In total 2 accidents resulting in at least one day off work were recorded in 2021 (2020: 1).

• Lost time injury frequency (LTIF) per 200,000 workable hours in 2021 was 0.05 (2020: 0.03). This is an increase in LTIF compared to 2020, but still well below the 0.13 target. The fact that most employees continued to work from home for most of the year is likely to have had a positive effect on the number of work-related accidents and incidents.

• Total recordable case frequency (TRCF) per 200,000 workable hours over 2021 was 1.05. This is a slight increase compared to 2020 (0.97) which might be an effect of increased awareness to report work related accidents and incidents.

Another objective for 2021 was to introduce all employees to the companywide desired Health & Safety behaviour. To do so, all employees were offered an e-learning module on strengthening our Occupational Health & Safety awareness. In addition, introduction and awareness sessions were held throughout the year.

In the Netherlands, we continued our level 2 certification on the Safety Culture Ladder, demonstrating that consciously safe working, designing, and advising are embedded in our culture and employee behaviour. With this certificate, we are ready for Safety in Procurement (Veiligheid in Aanbesteding (ViA)) which will be a requirement from 2022 in tenders from Rijkswaterstaat and other major clients that have signed the Safety in Construction Governance Code in the Netherlands. Also in the Netherlands, our teams who are active in the rail sector continued their level 4 certificate of the Safety Culture Ladder and those active in the energy sector continued their level 3 certificate. Our industry team obtained the level 3 certificate.