Since the introduction of NINA, Boskalis has successfully put the spotlight on improving safety awareness. During the numerous NINA Management and Do-It courses, start-up meetings and team refresher courses for the projects and operational units, there was an increasing demand for practical aids that can help people to work in concrete ways with safety risks at the workplace. As a result, a search was started for tools that will allow the operational staff and line managers to improve safety immediately in the working environment. In part on the basis of an Area West campaign (Slips, Trips & Falls), a separate working group was established with people from line and staff departments to look at how to roll out initiatives like this to the organization as a whole. The result is the Workbox approach, which focuses initially on personal safety. The first workboxes have therefore adopted the safe body theme. The main focus is on protecting hands and eyes, and preventing trips and falls. Together, these three areas cause almost half of all the accidents at our company. The next stage will be to extend the approach and to develop special workboxes, for example for preventing injury during mooring operations.

Focus on the body
This approach differs from the way in which many safety programs are developed; they emphasize the risks and dangers of specific activities. In this case the initial focus is on the body. The workbox consists of a workshop with support resources. Each workbox concentrates on one specific risk, giving greater depth to the NINA rules. The content of the workboxes is based largely on the lessons that can be learned from reported accidents and near misses. That information is now brought back to the organization by putting the received feedback to practical use.

Tailored to real life
The working group played a major role in this respect. About forty colleagues were involved in the development and were asked to give suggestions on a regular basis. Thanks to their comments, the plans could be developed still further.

In addition, participants are welcome to provide feedback during and after the workbox sessions so that the program can be tailored even more closely to real life. Every colleague is invited to come forward with ideas that contribute to a safer working environment. In that way, in the foreseeable future, a series of workboxes can be developed, covering a wide spectrum of subjects and categories that the projects and vessels can choose from, depending on what they need at that particular point in time.

During the workshops, all colleagues are requested to stop and think about how serious the subject is, and discuss people's past experiences in an open dialogue. Then the group is asked to complete a number of practical assignments and to think about an approach to mitigating the risk in question in their own working environment.

Support tools
The working group has also looked for ways of keeping the issue on the agenda for a longer period of time, and has developed support tools for that purpose. The workboxes are being developed for and by our own colleagues. Initially, a train the trainer course for the staff in the SHE-Q pool will be organized, focusing on the in's & out's of the approach, and enabling them to roll out the workboxes themselves for other colleagues and line management on the projects and the fleet.