Our approach

Safety is the first of Downer’s four Pillars. Zero Harm is embedded in our DNA. 

Our steadfast commitment to the safety of our people is validated in responses to employee engagement surveys, materiality assessment surveys, and the performance benchmarking we undertake every year. 

Downer has consistently achieved strong health and safety results, including in sectors that are exposed to high-risk activities. We are proud of our safety performance, and we also understand that we face challenges to maintain and improve this record, and continuously engage with our people to safeguard against complacency in the workforce. 

Our commitment to the health and safety of our people and our communities is expressed in strong safety leadership, engagement with our workforce and stakeholders, and a continual focus on identifying and managing risks. 

This commitment is reflected in the results we have achieved and our increased presence as Zero Harm thought leaders. Downer’s health and safety commitments are outlined in our Health and Safety Policy, which can be found here. 

Our performance

The performance information in this section includes Downer Australia and New Zealand operations. The performance data also includes Downer contractors and Downer employees involved in unincorporated joint ventures.

To achieve Downer’s targets and objectives relating to Health and safety, Downer prioritised the following short-term focus areas in FY22, which we committed to in our 2021 Sustainability Report:

Focus area
 Result
 
 Reference

Continue the consolidation of Critical Risk bow tie analysis and verification through our Communities of Practice

✓

 

Communities of Practice

Implement the improvements and outcomes identified by the Communities of Practice and incorporate them into The Downer Standard

✓

 

Communities of Practice

Build on the progress made on The Downer Standard and extend our consistent approach into deeper layers within the company, improving utilisation by the frontline

✓

 

Progress on The Downer Standard

Enrich the quality of our data and utilise emerging technologies in our strategy and planning activities

✓

 

Accelerating consolidation with artificial intelligence

Roll out Downer’s Enterprise Data Warehouse (EDW) to provide a robust foundation for advanced data analytics and reporting, including the introduction of data science techniques such as natural language processing and other forms of machine learning

✓

 

Enterprise Data Warehouse
Refine our in-house training programs to reflect The Downer Standard, and increase the risk management competency of our workforce ✓   Progress on The Downer Standard
Continue to monitor all COVID-19 risks and controls and support Government vaccination roll-out strategies. ✓   COVID-19 response

 

Critical Risk Management

A Critical Risk is a potential unwanted event that could result in one or more fatalities, and/or significant environmental harm (where the potential or real impact is a level 5 or 6 consequence on the Downer risk matrix). The top five Critical Risk activities for FY22 were:

  • Working with mobile plant and equipment 
  • Working at height
  • Vehicles and driving
  • Working with electricity
  • Working in the vicinity of existing services. Note: Working with stored and hazardous energy is no longer one of Downer’s top five Critical Risks, moving to the eighth-highest in FY22.

In FY22, we achieved no actions arising from High Potential Incidents overdue by greater than 30 days. The table below includes both frequency rates per million hours worked and numbers of incidents, in brackets, to enable comparison with previous years.

Downer continued Critical Risk management throughout FY22

Critical Risk activity FY20 FY21 FY22 Change FY20 - FY22
Working with mobile plant or equipment 0.52 (66) 0.50 (57) 0.36 (32) -31%
Working at height 0.59 (74) 0.40 (46) 0.35 (31) -41%
Vehicles and driving 0.25 (32) 0.26 (30) 0.27 (24) -8%
Working with electricity 0.29 (37) 0.22 (25) 0.17 (15) -41%
Working in vicinity of existing vehicles 0.05 (6) 0.06 (7) 0.06 (5) 20%

 

In FY22, Downer combined historical Critical Risk data for Hawkins and Spotless into the Downer reporting system. Therefore, the FY20 statistics reported in the table above differ from those reported in our 2021 report. The FY21 statistics also differ slightly from those reported in 2021 because a small number of incidents were reclassified during FY22. Reclassification of incidents occurs when additional information is obtained or the nature of an incident changes.

Downer utilises Communities of Practice, which are teams with representatives from across the organisation, with expertise in the subject matter relating to an aspect of a Critical Risk. They provide guidance to the Group on best practices in their subject areas. These teams work together to identify and share best practice lifecycle management, risk management and safe working practice across Downer to drive a continuous improvement focus to Critical Risk Management.

Each Business Unit leads at least one Community of Practice with participation from Business Units whose work involves that critical risk activity. There was strong focus on the ‘Working with mobile plant and equipment’ Critical Risk activity, with the Road Services business leading a program of work to improve the effectiveness of exclusion zone areas around moving plant and equipment.

The ‘Working at height’ activity was a focus in FY22, led by the Facilities Business Unit. This included improved information and instruction around effective controls through The Downer Standard, and the development of Toolbox Talk information on the implementation of controls to mitigate risks.

Downer’s Utilities Business Unit also spearheaded efforts to improve the effectiveness of controls relating to the ‘Working with electricity’ activity, building a comprehensive Group-wide review of controls into an update to Downer’s Working with electricity Standard.

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Looking critically at our Critical Risks

Downer aims to prevent fatalities and irreversible environmental events through management of Critical Risks. In FY22, Downer’s focus included:

  • Consolidating our approach
  • Driving consistency, efficiency, learning and continuous improvement
  • Reviewing our practices, our bow tie analysis and our controls, which are used to improve the management of risk and clarity of information and instruction provided to our workforce
  • Developing consistent data on performance which we use to drive priorities, and further improvements
  • Building momentum in the digital transformation of our Critical Risk management program and enabling us to take advantage of technology advancements as they arise.

The work involved detailed analysis of our Critical Risks and the controls required to manage these risks. Analysis of the criticality, effectiveness and function of these controls has been carried out by our Communities of Practice. This allows us to reduce duplication, and assess and strengthen our understanding of which controls are truly critical. The work is being used in our instruction and training programs to help our people focus on the risks and controls that matter.

Using advanced analytical technologies, such as semantic natural language analysis, we have consolidated over 300 Critical Risk bow ties and 16,000 controls into an integrated set of approximately 50 bow ties and 3,000 controls. Our consolidation work has enabled us to comprehensively assess and integrate our existing Critical Risk and control information and remove duplication. This is an important step in optimising and evolving our Critical Risk program.

This consolidation will enable Downer to provide our people with clear information on the controls that must be in place in order for work to be undertaken. It also means that we can improve the effectiveness of our verification activities so that we focus on the controls that are most effective for the work taking place. It also enables us to integrate insights from across the Group on which controls are working and which are not.

This supports our commitment to make it easier for our frontline to make informed choices and support our people to deliver our services safely for our customers and the communities in which we operate. We will continue to adopt advanced and emerging technologies that deliver deeper insight, drive enhanced performance and improve the experience for our frontline.

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Accelerating consolidation with artificial intelligence

In FY22, Downer has successfully utilised artificial intelligence to accelerate our Critical Risk Consolidation program. Using a number of innovative natural language processing and artificial intelligence tools, Downer has been able to complete works that would previously have taken up to four years in just one year.

Natural language processing has been used to analyse our incident data and systems of work to verify that the risk controls required are consistent with those identified during Critical Control Consolidation activities. 

The ability of the natural language processor to identify phrases as well as particular words, without being limited to exact phrases or words, has allowed Downer to process significant volumes of information in a short time. 

The review of the incident data has supported the Critical Control Consolidation program and development of master control libraries, and fast-tracked systems of work alignment activities.

The same tools will be utilised to review training programs and information to fast-track consolidation and alignment of training programs to drive consistency and reduce duplication and waste through consolidated training programs.

Downer continues to work with technology partners, such as Microsoft, to develop and integrate advanced technology in the analysis and management of Critical Risks in the business.

The consolidation and optimisation delivery model is delivered through our Communities of Practice.

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Enterprise Data Warehouse

Building on the work completed in FY21, Downer’s Enterprise Data Warehouse has established the foundation for data federation across our Zero Harm systems. This consolidates our incident, injury management, inspection, environment and sustainability data in one place.

In FY22, we accomplished our goal to create and optimise a Downer-wide Zero Harm data model to enable access to data and improve analytics for our Business Units. 

The benefits will be two-fold.

Firstly, it presents a single source of truth for Zero Harm data, which will allow for better decision making and insights across the organisation.

Secondly, we will have the ability to run predictive analytics on our data to support operational decisions.

Furthermore, it will support our aspiration to leverage data science techniques such as natural language processing and computer vision to support operational and Critical Risk decision-making.

The planned expansion of the Enterprise Data Warehouse in FY23 to consolidate other data domains – including financial, people, project controls and asset data – will play an integral part in our data and analytics strategy.

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Communities of Practice 

This year, Downer’s Communities of Practice commenced a multi-year program of work to deliver the optimisation and consolidation of the Critical Risk program. Delivering this work through a Community of Practice forum enabled us to harness the expertise of our people and operational requirements.

Downer currently has 10 active Zero Harm Communities of Practice, with a number of sub-groups to focus on activities that occur relevant to the risk. For example, the Health and Hygiene Community of Practice has sub-groups associated with specific risks within that subject area, such as noise and health monitoring to support the different risks and requirements associated with the work. Each Community of Practice consists of Operational and Zero Harm employees from across the Group, and is sponsored by a Downer Executive.

The scope of works for these communities involves consolidation of Critical Risk activities, and the Critical Controls associated with the activity, to reduce duplication, drive consistency in how risks are managed and how work is performed, and drive improvements in data collection and analysis.

This consistency streamlines our management of Critical Risks across the Group, and will ultimately make it easier for our people to make the right safety decisions. The outcomes of the work are embedded into our systems and processes, and the information is provided to frontline employees – making it easier for them to understand what Critical Risks are present and which Critical Controls must be present, or may be optional, depending on the nature of the work.

The results of this work will be considered when reviewing training systems and programs, to provide our workforce with accurate information concerning the management of risks.

During FY22, the Communities of Practice completed a comprehensive review of the respective Critical Controls applicable to their areas. This included:

  • Developing a master Critical Control library, along with Critical Control function description to support frontline employees in making sure that the right controls are selected
  • Finalising bow tie consolidation
  • Establishing the Cranes and Lifting Community of Practice, and Scaffolding Community of Practice, which have continued to improve information in The Downer Standard, which is accessible across the organisation. These enhancements have been informed by feedback from the frontline, and have driven best practice and consistency of approach and understanding of the risks. These communities also review industry guidance data and incidents to assess the impact on our systems of work for these activities, and drive any required changes.

A number of Communities of Practice have also prepared training and information to support the work they have completed, and started the process of reviewing our systems and processes on The Downer Standard.

Reinforcing The Downer Standard 

In FY22, Downer built on the foundations established through The Downer Standard, and the benefits provided by centralised information, requirements and processes. We have focused on responding to feedback to enhance the clarity of the information provided, reduce duplication and capture opportunities to improve the way we work, and the information we collect.

The feedback received through The Downer Standard not only offers positive opportunities for improvement, it also demonstrates that the system is being effectively utilised by the business.

We conducted a Group-wide review of the Safety Management Plan template and model content, working across the organisation to modernise our approach to responding to the various requirements of the different types of work we typically undertake, and capture regular customer requirements. This work has also led to the development of additional model safety management plans that are specific to customers we work with most frequently, and to better reflect the breadth and diversity of our services. This work would have been significantly harder to achieve without having a centralised approach in place.

Wellness in the workplace

Injury prevention remains a critical part of improving employee wellness. If a worker starts to feel discomfort, Downer supports and encourages them to access healthcare services proactively before a debilitating injury occurs. Where an injury has already occurred, Downer’s injury management specialists support the employee to return to work at their own pace.

We support the physical wellness of our workforce through a range of programs and initiatives. These include:

  • 24/7 access to Downer’s Employee Assistance Program, which provides support for both our people and their immediate families. The service also provides response support following critical incidents
  • Fatigue management practices
  • Work rotation arrangements for repetitive activities to reduce the risks associated with muscle fatigue and repetitive strain injuries
  • Early intervention programs such as drug and alcohol testing, and zero tolerance to the presence of these substances in our workforce
  • A dedicated injury management service to assist employees with both work-related and non-work-related injuries and illnesses to enable their return to work
  • Information on safe lifting and tools and support equipment to reduce manual handling requirements
  • Information to support good health, delivered through the annual Our Safety Focus program. In 2022, this program reinforced the importance of being alert in the ‘Moments that matter’, building on our 2021 theme of the importance of good decision making
  • Ergonomic office spaces, many fitted with sit/stand desks, computer or document stands, and foot pedestals
  • Access to end-of-trip or shower facilities in many of our offices to support running/walking or cycling to work, and promotion and entry fee coverage for employees who participate in nominated sporting fundraiser events
  • Participation in health promotion events, such as Movember, R U OK? Day and Stress Down Day
  • Flexible working, and remote working options to better support the balance between work and home commitments, and to reduce stress.
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Mental health and wellbeing

In 2017, Downer recognised that mental health was a growing societal issue, and created a multitiered strategy to help Downer employees and their families manage their health and wellbeing.

A key outcome of this strategy is the delivery of the Gold Standard Accredited ¹ Mental Health First Aid training course across the business, which arms our people with the knowledge and insights to support themselves, their colleagues, family, friends and people within their communities.

The importance of the Mental Health First Aid program as a key strategic initiative to Downer was reinforced when it was included as a KPI attached to our Sustainability Linked Loan.

In FY22, 492 people were trained in Mental Health First Aid (MHFA) across the company. Mental Health First Aiders are available to assist their colleagues, family and friends during challenges to their mental health and to identify persons who may need support. They are also able to direct people needing support to the appropriate services.

Since the program’s inception in 2018, Downer has partnered with Mental Health First Aid Australia to build an employee peer support network of more than 2,000 accredited Mental Health First Aiders. However, Downer’s commitment to mental health goes beyond our workforce – we also open up the course to employees’ family members, to joint venture partners, as well as members of the communities in which we operate, meaning, in total, Downer has trained more than 2,500 people in Mental Health First Aid.

Having this mature culture allowed Downer to redevelop our MHFA course during the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic, and trial an online version of the course in conjunction with the MHFA Australia research arm. This course has now been endorsed by MHFA Australia and is being utilised, not only internally at Downer, but also around the world.

Over the past three years, Downer also created, launched and trained thousands of people in Foundations of Mental Health, which gives an insight into the basic neuroscience behind the most common mental illnesses in Australia.

In FY22, in response to a growing need to redefine and maintain resilience, Downer created a seven-week in-house Protective Factors webinar series focusing on creating psychologically safe environments and techniques for maintaining good health, mindfulness strategies, communication and empathic leadership skills. Topics covered include psychological elements of health and wellbeing, resilience, empathic leadership and communicating and connecting. This program follows on from accreditation in Mental Health First Aid training.

As part of our commitment to providing our people with the information they need to support their mental wellbeing, Downer provides monthly online Lunch and Learn sessions. These sessions are tailored to address trends surfacing through Downer’s Employee Assistance Program, as well as general advice to support wellbeing – including techniques for managing stress, the importance of sleep and how to improve sleep quality, eating healthier, the importance of social connections and getting outdoors, and guidance and encouragement on adaptive coping.

¹ While the program itself is accredited, the employees who attend the course are not accredited unless they register directly with Mental Health First Aid Australia. This data is limited to Downer’s internal MHFA tracking tool.

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COVID-19 response

Downer’s business model has remained resilient throughout the COVID-19 crisis.

Downer continues to be vigilant around the management of COVID-19 and maintaining the highest levels of controls in line with government advice.

Downer supported Australia and New Zealand Governments’ vaccination initiatives. 

We also provided information about the benefits of vaccination and strongly encouraged our employees to consult with their treating medical professional and, consistent with that advice, to have the vaccination when it was available to them. Where a government, industry or customer vaccination requirement existed, as with other forms of vaccination, Downer adopted this requirement.

The public health response to COVID-19 transitioned during FY22 from an elimination/suppression strategy to one of ‘living with COVID’ across Australia and New Zealand, as vaccination rates across the community reached government targets. With this change in public health response, Downer experienced increased rates of COVID-19 cases and contacts within our business, reflecting the increased transmission in the community.

Downer’s Business Continuity Plans specifically relating to the COVID-19 pandemic, are supported by detailed COVIDSafe Standards, site-specific COVIDSafe Plans and a Pandemic Playbook that guided the management of positive cases and contacts. These have been in place in various iterations since February 2020. The Business Continuity Plans considered and documented strategies to manage the risk whereby increased COVID-19 transmission might impact Downer’s ability to meet project service requirements or milestones due to:

  • Access to persons in key roles, or roles requiring specialist skills or licences
  • Unavailability of employees due to being COVID-19 positive, complying with isolation requirements, or following a major outbreak on-site
  • Access to supply
  • Delays through delivery partners, such as labour hire or specialists
  • Delays associated with increased shutdown and deep cleaning.

Business Continuity Plans, COVIDSafe Standards and plans, and the Playbook were regularly reviewed to ensure they remained contemporary based on: lessons learned within Downer and across industry throughout the pandemic; new knowledge regarding behaviour of variants; changes to government requirements including Testing Tracing Isolation and Quarantine (TTIQ); and the availability and effectiveness of testing, vaccinations and antivirals. This was underpinned by regular communication across the Group.

In advance of the changed public health response, Downer undertook a review of Business Continuity Plans, which addressed the following:

  • Worker safety: Risk assessments were reviewed around the appropriateness of controls in place and their effectiveness in a high transmission environment. COVIDSafe Standards and plans were updated to address additional controls such as rapid testing, self-testing and the impact of vaccination. Plans also addressed controls for those who are not vaccinated and at greater risk of transmission, or in a vulnerable category.
  • Business resilience: Business Continuity Plans were reviewed to ensure they adequately considered the impacts to critical project deliverables, critical roles and potential supply delays. The review of the business continuity arrangements also required the business to further develop contingency plans where a difficulty was assessed.

Downer implemented a Situation Report (SITREP) process derived from crisis management processes to monitor business impacts across the Group as public health management transitioned from the suppression focus.

Overall, Downer’s Business Continuity Plans proved effective in minimising impacts.

Labour was impacted particularly in locations with higher community transmission. Labour was also impacted by border restrictions, which occasionally constrained the ability to move key skillsets around as required to meet contract obligations. However, Downer deployed strategies to manage this impact, including initiatives to protect critical roles, redirecting parts of the workforce when possible and working with customers to help mitigate delays and reprioritise works.

Supply chain impacts included disruptions to materials that are manufactured and supplied from overseas, including the availability of Rapid Antigen Tests. In addition, logistics suppliers (including warehousing and transport providers) were impacted significantly, which affected the receipt of some orders. Some issues were reported with smaller delivery partners where labour impacts were felt heavily amongst smaller workforces. The ability to engage with alternate contract partners assisted in managing this, along with changes to requirements for TTIQ for close contacts.

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VAXn8 application

To help protect our people against the spread of COVID-19, and ensure Downer could continue delivering services for our customers throughout the pandemic, Downer developed our own online portal for employees to register their vaccination status.

As Australia and New Zealand shifted towards living with COVID-19, most of our customers required Downer to record the vaccination status of our workforce. Doing so enabled us to continue delivering services for our customers safely and ensured we met the requirements of Public Health Orders.

Downer developed an online portal, which we called VAXn8, and encouraged our people to upload their vaccination records and medical exemptions.

Protecting the privacy of our people is one of Downer’s highest priorities. All information uploaded to the portal is stored securely and protected by strict access control mechanisms to ensure that only approved members of Downer’s People and Culture and Zero Harm leadership teams could view the information and documentation.

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Our future focus

In FY23, Downer will renew our focus on progressing key strategic health and safety programs and initiatives. These future areas of focus include:

  • Continuing to build the integrity of our consolidated Critical Control library gap analysis to verify inclusion of regulatory requirements accompanied by compliance mapping
  • Conducting gap analysis review of Safe Work Method Statement controls and aligning with the Critical Risk Control library
  • Conducting review and gap analysis of inspection and audit forms with the Critical Risk control library for consistency, optimisation and to eliminate duplication
  • Continuing to analyse incident data, optimised with artificial intelligence tools to provide valuable insights regarding Critical Control effectiveness and incident causal pathways
  • Continuing to improve the quality and effectiveness of information to frontline employees, through bespoke training programs providing concise targeted information concerning the core ‘go/no go’ Critical Risk controls for relevant Critical Risk activities
  • Reviewing permitting processes to drive alignment and effectiveness of subcontractor management
  • Reviewing and refining lessons learned processes to increase effectiveness and enhance the quality of the information obtained through the process, which improves Critical Risk and control analysis, causal pathway understanding and systems of work
  • Reviewing and improving Zero Harm management system content, integrating outputs of Communities of Practice and insights from the Critical Risk program.

 

Emerging issues and market trends 

Managing public aggression 

Providing a safe workplace is a fundamental principle of health and safety and human rights.

Violence and aggressive behaviour by members of the public towards employees who interact with the public, or conduct work in public locations, is increasing in our workplaces, mirroring increasing rates in society in general.

Protecting our people from exposure to this risk requires a new way to look at protection and providing workplace safety. To better understand the impact of violence and aggression in our workplaces, Downer has established a Community of Practice to explore the ways in which violence occurs, and to develop a best practice framework to support our people in the management of this risk.

Transformative technology

Technology is changing the work that we do – and the way we do it. We recognise that this can deliver considerable improvements in the productivity and safety of our workforce, but we must remain aware of the potential issues when rolling out technology. Opportunities include the ability to reduce manual, repetitive, high risk tasks. The reduction in human exposure to these tasks decreases the possibility of significant injury across the workforce. Throughput may also be increased with the deployment of technology, allowing expansion of productive activities.

The roll-out of technologies is not without risks. The risk of digitalised psychosocial violence is prevalent when technology is rolled out without consultation. Employees may fear job losses if a number of previously manual roles are replaced by technology. A loss of autonomy and privacy may result when workers are forced, in rapid fashion, to reskill and upskill without a considered transition plan and consideration of the skills and experiences of employees.

Trust is another issue. When rolling out technology, we may not harness its full potential because we don’t trust it to replace humans to do particular tasks safely, or we may not believe it can do tasks as well as humans can. Conversely, we may over-trust technology and not implement sufficient monitoring parameters and procedures, and this can result in adverse outcomes from a health and safety perspective.

An increasing trend with the roll-out of new technology is workers spending more time using screens, monitoring processes rather than completing them manually. This results in increased time sitting or in sedentary positions. Downer utilises ergonomic workplace equipment, encourages agile office environments, and provides our workforce with information on the risks associated with sitting for prolonged periods of time. For operational staff, we utilise practices such as task rotation to safeguard against overuse and underuse risks.

Downer has been exploring the increased use of automation and robotic equipment. Further, drone technology has been deployed to monitor risks at locations where a top down view can provide enhanced visibility over on-the-ground monitoring.

Downer collaborates with technology experts to explore opportunities for new and enhanced technology. In doing so, we ensure that technology is rolled out with significant consultation with all stakeholders to ensure that multiple perspectives are considered.