An innovative partnership with the oil and gas industry heralded a new era in safety for MS/Letbane
Cross-industry collaboration helped create the vision for an organizational safety culture
77%
Reduction in frequency rates
Challenge
Metrosalkabet and Hovestadens Letbane (MS/Letbane) is a Danish transport development and construction company with overall responsibility for the operation and expansion of Copenhagen’s metro and light railway system. In 2011, MS/Letbane began construction on the City Circle Line (Cityringen), an underground loop which was rumored to be Copenhagen’s largest construction project in 400 years.
Poor safety performance during the first six years of the project led leaders to recognize more was needed. MS/Letbane’s Executive Director and Dansk Offshore’s Deputy Managing Director formed an innovative collaborative alliance to help the company learn from the vast experience, commitments and partnerships seen in the oil and gas industry. JMJ was engaged as a partner and catalyst to help develop a clear vision, address gaps in safety leadership and culture, support developing safety leadership skills, and bring about safety alignment with contractor partners.
Solution
Phase one: creating the vision and framing the journey: To begin the safety journey, JMJ helped leadership look at their own capabilities as safety leaders and develop a deeper understanding of the current culture across their offices and project sites. Initial conversations with contractors and employees revealed a perception that safety was not seen as a value in the company. The CEO took this to heart and determined to turn a corner. Together, the CEO and his top 35 leaders created a vison for the future safety culture. The executive director and her team took this vision to the board and made the case for change. With the board behind them, they moved to the next phase in developing their safety culture – building common safety skills and developing key managers. JMJ was again chosen to partner in this.
Phase two: leading the vision: JMJ took a tailored approach to implementing the vision, constantly adapting to meet the organization’s requests. Each key department was involved in ‘vision engagement’ sessions, and a project management team was formed with a commitment to ensuring the whole organization connected with the strategy. A key element of this was closer collaboration with contractors. With our support, leadership set about engaging differently with contractors to create alignment, develop relationships, shared understanding and ultimately, build a high-performance team. MS/Letbane’s commitment is to create a culture of care where everyone across the organization returns home safely, every day. To achieve this, leadership set out to:
- Change the perception of safety from low prestige to fundamental/high prestige
- Form collaborative partnerships with contractors
- Learn from positive experiences as well as from mistakes
- Adopt a right first time safety culture
- Train skilled and knowledgeable safety leaders across the organization
Many have been involved in the change. People are carrying it forward – as ambassadors, champions. There is power at all levels now to shift culture.
I can see things on site. Safety isn’t just a point on the agenda. It’s become a whole different subject. It isn’t about what is going wrong but looking ahead to mitigate situations where someone could get hurt. At Metro, people are realizing their responsibilities and the power they have. Even without knowing it, they have the power to help change the overall culture. This is the ultimate compliment to JMJ.
Results
The partnership with Dansk Offshore and JMJ resulted in the best safety year in MS/Letbane’s history. While the challenges continue, the company is relentless about safety on its sites, collaborating with contractors, and adapting its approach to ensure the safety of every person on every site. Safety is no longer seen as a separate item but as equal and integral to budget, productivity, scope etc.
Key takeaways
- Senior leaders may not be aware of how their safety culture is perceived
- Begin with a clearly-articulated safety vision and strategy that your organization and contractors can get behind
- Start with small steps that will make a difference. This can be a springboard to securing buy in and funding for the next phase of your transformation
- Including contractors in your safety vision early on is critical to it embedding and growing
- Learning from the successes of other industries (in this case oil and gas) can produce breakthrough results faster than you might think
23% decrease*
in accident frequency
95% decrease*
in registered accidents with absense
15% decrease*
in accident-related absence frequency
95% decrease*
in serious accidents