Health and Safety

Our objectives

• Continuous improvement of our Health and Safety management system
• Working with our business partners
• Focus on reducing key hazards
• Focus on health
• Being prepared for major incidents

Our strategy
The health and safety of our passengers and staff is of paramount importance.

Our established management system is applied across health and safety, fire safety, occupational health and contingency planning and is known as the ‘Managing Responsibly’ system.  This year the system was revised and improved and rolled out with guidance to assist users implementing the system.

Many health and safety issues on the airport are shared with our business partners – this is especially the case on the airfield.  We have a number of working groups in place with our business partners to ensure the highest standards of safety in ground and flight operations. Areas of focus include aircraft turnaround, road safety and falls from height. 
 
We continued to work closely with government agencies, local authorities, the emergency services, our business partners and staff to ensure we have robust contingency plans in place for foreseeable incidents

Our performance

Continue to improve our Health and Safety management system
Our established Health and Safety management system ‘Managing Responsibly System’ was revised and rolled out  across the business this year. Improvements to our system in 2005/06 include:

• production of a ‘Made Easy’ guide for managers
• identification of H&S competencies associated with redesigned roles in the operational areas
• development of a suite of training programmes to meet our training needs
• improved H&S governance.

Focus on key hazard areas:
Heathrow airport has a broad and diverse range of health and safety risks. To ensure we manage these risks appropriately, each of our business units has a key safety risk register, which feeds our Heathrow Health and Safety Risk Register. The registers are used to identify and manage key hazards and focus activity at both an airport and business unit level, to achieve ‘optimal’ controls.}

The hazard portfolio at the airport is wide ranging, from asbestos to x-ray machines.  We focus on high risk hazards (low frequency, high consequence or high frequency, lower consequence). The examples below include a sample of the work that has been  done to reduce the risk associated with the hazard:

Manual handling
Security - Manual handling and musculoskeletal injuries are a main cause of injury and absence within our security teams.  Strain is placed on the body by movements associated with the body search activity. 

Significant progress has been made with the introduction of non metallic protective footwear for staff passing through Staff security search areas minimising the number of archway metal detector activations and reducing the need for security staff to stoop to conduct foot searches or staff having to removing footwear to pass though x ray machines.

Baggage handlers -The movement of bags from our baggage systems into baggage ‘dollies’ or vehicles is mainly a physical manual handling activity.  We are trialling a new baggage vacuum lifting aid which has the potential to reduce manual handling risk in the baggage handling halls where high volumes of bags are processed into or out of bulk storage bins or trailers for loading onto or from aircraft.

Safe plant and equipment
Work continues to ensure the safety of our plant and equipment.  Examples during 2005/06 include:

•  the completion of a risk assessment programme within the baggage halls
• major research programme into structural loads imposed by aircraft on runway lights which has provided vital information to manage the fatigue life of these safety critical assets
  

Fire Safety:We continue to work to improve our processes and physical controls to reduce the risk of fire. Example of this work include:

• Development and roll out of an improved fire risk assessment tool
• Improvements to our active and passive fire control systems - the replacement of the fire alarm system in Terminal 4 is now well underway.  The recently completed fire alarm system upgrade in T1 has allowed the operational staff to better understand and manage activation and reduce the amount of business disruption caused by unwanted activation of the alarm system. 
• A review of the controls on the advertising and display materials that are used by retail in our terminal buildings and the development of more flexible guidance

Focus on health
A health strategy has been developed by a team of Heathrow staff for BAA employees. Key elements of the strategy include:

• Understanding our key work and non work related health risks and designing a occupational health service around them
• Focusing on health promotion
• Making health services visible and accessible to staff
  Health promotion activity during 2005/06 included support for European Health and Safety week, support for the HSE-led BACKs campaign, smoking cessation sessions and general wellbeing checks including weight, cholesterol, blood pressure

Being prepared for major incidents
Worldwide events and local incidents have the potential to disrupt Heathrow’s operation and our passenger experience. This year a new callout system was introduced for BAA, airport business partners and local authorities which will improve the speed of response by crisis teams during periods of operational interruption.

We continue to work with government agencies, local authorities, the emergency services, our business partners and staff to ensure we have robust contingency plans in place for foreseeable incidents. 

For example, BAA Heathrow are working with government departments and business partners to understand and plan for the effects should there be a flu pandemic. This piece of work has involved close working with the Staff Safety Representative community and airlines to ensure a consistent approach.

Below are examples of how our contingency planning has worked this year

Fuel Crisis
The Buncefield fire on 10 December 2005 resulted in Heathrow loosing one third of the fuel supply  to the airport which came via pipeline directly into the hydrant refuelling system. The Heathrow loss of fuel supply was implemented and this minimised operational impacts to the 83 airlines at Heathrow at a time when the overall operation could easily have been severely disrupted. Stocks are now beginning to return to normal, however, the contingency plan still operates with airlines “tinkering in “ their own fuel and long haul carriers reducing their fuel uplifts.

Gate Gourmet
An unofficial walkout by British Airways baggage staff in August resulted in BA cancelling their worldwide operation for close to 48 hours. BAA’s contingency plan for serious disruption was quickly and efficiently brought into action which resulted in unaffected airlines being able to resume near normal operations during an event which attracted national media coverage

H&S Performance Targets

• * no. pax accidents within our control per 1m pax
• ** per 100,000 hours worked

This year we have focused on reducing passenger accidents on escalators and travelators and slips, trips and falls – the main causes of passenger injury. Injuries to passengers that are within our control have fallen to 1.16 per one million passengers.

The staff lost time injury rate has increased to 1 per 100,000 hours worked. Work continues to focus on the main causes of staff injuries, including manual handling and slips / trips / falls.

Fire Safety – the number of fires and false alarms increased during 2005/06. However, in comparison with fire safety standards for false alarm activations set out in British standards, we generally compare favourably – for example Terminal 3 has exceeded the British standard recommendations by almost 50% and will be seeking further improvement over the coming months.

Going Forward
We remain committed to meeting our objectives of reducing injuries to people in our care and ensuring the airport is prepared for major incidents.