Integrated report 2021

Budimex strives to ensure that the Group’s employees follow the best health and safety practices in their daily work. Training in this area is organised more frequently than prescribed by law. The training programme is co-designed with the employees, who have an opportunity to consult and evaluate occupational health and safety workshops.

As part of periodic instructions provided by their immediate supervisors, they can update theiŕ knowledge on the most important hazards and health and safety rules related to the tasks they perform. Numerous campaigns were also conducted – both on the intranet (articles) and using standard communication tools (posters and leaflets placed in offices and on construction sites) on health and safety standards binding at Budimex.

COVID-19 prevention

Since the introduction of the pandemic status in March 2020, an Interim Manual for Health and Safety Training is in force in the organisation. Health and safety training for supervisory staff is delivered via e-learning, for manual workers by their direct supervisors on the basis of materials developed by the Agreement for Safety in Construction. Training in the project’s safety management system for the youngest staff as part of the Young Engineer Academy is conducted online. A number of training sessions and workshops were also organised as part of Safety Week, but they took place outdoors.

This year Budimex has also started a series of training courses on „OHS Leadership and Building Safety Culture in the organization” for Top Management, which are held on-site, whilst complying to the COVID safety regime, and each training is preceded by antigenic testing of internal trainers and all trainees.

The pandemic affected the form of training and development activities for Employees conducted by the Development and Training Department. The activities were shifted to the form of remote training, nevertheless maintaining the substantive scope and adjusting the needs and opportunities for employees to participate in the Training. The training offer in the union in 2021 was strengthened through a series of podcasts, eLearning platforms, instructional and training videos, and a series of Webinars.

Training in 2021 was largely conducted remotely, however, when required (e.g. training related to occupational safety on the Contract or technical training) it was conducted in a stationary form.

Stationary trainings were carried out with the approval of the supervisors, and with a sanitary regime. Tests for the SARS_Cov_2 virus were performed before the trainings. Hand disinfectant fluids and masks were available. In most cases, consent for such training was given for teams working continuously with each other and in programmes and projects requiring staff to attend training.

Safety Week

In 2021, Budimex organised the annual “Safety Week”. Employees of the Budimex Group and Subcontractors had the opportunity to participate in a number of trainings, webinars and events that were offered as part of a rich programme. Centrally, 45 practical fire training sessions, 21 practical first aid training sessions and a number of health and wellbeing webinars, where participants could, for example, obtain practical information on combating tobacco addiction or on the prevention of breast and cervical cancer and testicular and prostate cancer. During the “Safety Week”, the DKMS Foundation conducted its action – Bone Marrow Donor Week. The foundation’s webinar was attended by 175 people, and 39 signed up as bone marrow donors. Other events of the “Week of Safety” were attended by the following guests:

• PIP
• The Fire Brigade
• UDT
• Ambulance services
• GDDiK
• Investors

This year’s “Safety Week” programme was attended by 3 605 employees of Budimex and 2 149 employees from 437 subcontractor companies.

Safety in Construction is a project promoting safety culture among the employees of Budimex SA. The basic assumption is to change the paradigm in thinking about safety and to redirect attention from formal issues (legal acts, instructions, etc.) to people and their decisions and actions. The second important element is to see safety as a process that requires the commitment and work of every employee, at every stage of work, every day. Safety is not a one-off product, we create it every day anew through our decisions and actions. The main objective of the project is to induce an attitude of co-responsibility for safety issues among Budimex employees by referring to values, a sense of personal empowerment, co-responsibility for one another and developing good habits of thinking and acting. The project included: educational and promotional films, webinars and one-pagers containing a summary of the most important content.

Among the invited guests were people from the world of business and science, who, due to their professional experience, could share valuable knowledge and inspire us to take a new look at safety with us. Krzysztof Hołowczyc showed us, using concrete examples, that the “shortcut” is always longer and the whole team is responsible for safety issues. Beata Kula and Mateusz Banaszkiewicz, in turn, talked about how cognitive errors and habitual actions can lead to decision-making mistakes and how to counteract them.

Other OHS training

Training in the area of occupational safety has also found its place in the cyclical educational and development programmes implemented at the company. As part of the “Academy of the Young Engineer”, on-line trainings dedicated to young construction engineers were held, presenting the most important aspects of safety management at the level of a construction contract, cooperation with subcontractors and practical application of this knowledge on the example of works at height (which occur̨ on many tasks performed by the Budimex Group).

At the end of the year, in the scope of the programme “Contract Manager Academy”: – a development programme that prepares employees for their role as contract managers, dedicated webinars were held on building a safety culture and safety leadership, as well as on the new responsibilities for implementing safety strategies at the level of the team they will manage in the future.

In 2020, a “Stand Down” awareness campaign was implemented for construction workers and subcontractors, with the aim of reinforcing attentiveness to all incidents with the potential to be fatal and responding to any perceived irregularities or unsafe behaviour on projects.

As part of its commitment to the ‘Agreement for Safety in the Construction Industry’, Budimex has developed a number of new standards (including the ‘Standard for Work in the Railway Area’) and occupational health and safety guidelines, through which it has made a significant contribution to improving safety in the industry.

How Budimex reacts to accidents

In the Budimex Group, each accident is described in accordance with the Polish statutory classification as well as with the procedures and classification adopted by the strategic investor – Ferrovial Group. The Group’s internal self-regulation is more restrictive than the legal regulations on accident rates. The Company conducts in-depth analyses of accidents and post-accident statistics (there are e.g. differences in the accident assessment process and the definition of severe accidents), which makes it possible to precisely identify which specific activities are a source of risḱ and which types of behaviour should be avoided́ and encouraged.

The exposure of workers to hazards depends on the nature of the work performed. In the case of construction contracts, hazards are related, for example, to the risk of falling from a height or injury in contact with construction machinery. In case of Mostostal Kraków SA, hazards arise from using band saws and machines with moving parts needed for processing steel structures and machines with moving parts, transport of structures by means of an overhead crane and their loading and unloading.

In turn, FBSerwis SA employees responsible for maintaining roads and motorways are exposed, among other things, to being hit by vehicles involved in traffic. Waste management involves risks related to biological agents (e.g. pricks, cuts by contaminated elements of waste) as well as the risk of being hit by machines and vehicles within and outside the waste treatment plant.

All accidents, regardless of their outcome, are treated with complete seriousness in the Budimex Group. Every serious incident is communicated throughout the organisation by means of alerts. Every year, the company conducts research into all incidents that have occurred in the organisation.

n the first half of 2021, EIR (Executive Incident Review) meetings were held every 2 weeks and in the 3rd and 4th quarter every week excluding world and public holidays. The purpose of the meetings was, as last year, to share experiences, take and promote corrective action and appropriate post-accident handling. As a result of the analysis of accident data, a number of preventive measures were taken in 2021:

provision of Budimex supervisory staff on each day of construction work – systematic reporting of planned staffing for the weekend to the Area Director has been implemented,

educating employees of Budimex and Subcontractors by providing information on accidents and PAEs (Potentially Accidental Events) with a fatal potential during quarterly and safety instructions, and making them familiar with alerts,

implementation of “Health and Safety Patrols” on all railway sites – involvement of management, and education of young workers in identifying risks and applying good practices on the site, exchange of observations between professionals, involvement of workers in health and safety review of the site,

prohibiting unauthorised workers from repairing construction machinery on the site,

educational training for supervisory staff (review with staff all circumstances and formalities for dealing with accidents; analysis of causes; information on possible consequences).

the introduction of compulsory weekly coordination meetings,

introduction of responsibility training for the supervision of Subcontractors carried out by Budimex supervision,

the introduction of compulsory rounds of site supervision at the end of the working day, taking into account the completeness of the health and safety arrangements at the end of the day. If there are any deficiencies, the designated persons will work to rectify them the following morning.

In the reported period no cases of occupational diseases were identified in the Budimex Group.

The most common types of injury among employees were dislocations and joint sprains, surface wounds and fractures. Among subcontractors in 2021, the most common injuries were fractures and surface wounds.