L&T's focus on 'Zero Harm' aided by tech, EHS policies and commitment

Mumbai (Maharashtra) [India], March 24 (ANI/Mediawire): Larsen & Toubro (L&T), one of India's leading engineering and construction companies, has always been committed to creating a safe and healthy workplace for its employees.
The conglomerate has been taking this commitment a step further by aiming to become a Zero Harm company. What does this mean for about 50,000 L&T employees, over 2 lakh workmen hustling across 800 plus project sites, 13 manufacturing campuses and multiple offices across 30 countries?
It means that L&T is doing everything possible to prevent accidents and injuries from happening at workplaces. This includes implementing rigorous safety procedures and training programs, constantly monitoring and improving workplace safety standards, as well as harnessing new age technologies for SMART applications. All, L&T work sites are certified under ISO 45001.
S N Subrahmanyan, CEO & MD, L&T shares his thoughts about ensuring Zero Harm at L&T workplaces, "Safety will not take root if it is only top driven; it must be bottom-up too, with the widespread realization that everyone needs to get home safe every single day. Create an attitude of safety, not just procedures. Watch your back and those of your colleagues and co-workers too. Do it right. Do it safely. Do it every time."
Managing Safety "Top down and Bottom Up"
Within L&T, with the widespread realization that everyone needs to get home safe every single day. L&T's EHS (Environment, Health and Safety) Council was formulated to ensure that the Board of Directors are fully appraised on the implementation and direction of L&T Health and Safety Policy across the L&T Group.
The EHS Council undertakes periodic review of all incidents and provides guidance to proactively manage risks and focus on resources to prevent any accident or incident.
The corporate EHS Policy of the company demonstrates its commitment to an accident-free workplace along with the management framework to be deployed across businesses. It has deployed EHS teams at every site which work in tandem with project site teams, with the objective of implementing industry-leading safety practices to achieve the 'Zero Harm' objective. To stay relevant, the policy is periodically reviewed by Subramanian Sarma, Whole-time Director and Chair, EHS Council and the senior management.
The Connected Workman & Digital EHS Initiatives
The firm's ultimate digital vision is of the connected workman. Sensors and beacons on the workmen can detect altitude, temperature and other environmental conditions and monitor vitals such as heartbeat, pulse rate, blood pressure and fatigue. Various AI models and methods can generate suitable alerts in real-time to prevent incidents. Work in this area is at an experimental stage as L&T strives to find the best solutions in the near future. In a quest to achieve its 'Zero Harm' objective, L&T firmly places digitalization at the heart of safety.
The 'BIM for Safety' initiative is transforming the way EHS functions. BIM comprises 3D-models embedded with data and information and has been an excellent platform to share resources and improve co-ordination. This path-breaking technology is used to enhance safety at work sites through identification and mitigation of risks, making a paradigm shift in EHS performance.
Good safety begins awareness and training, and L&T is using innovative digital technologies to impart such training to our workmen. L&T has developed films using Immersive Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality to demonstrate safety practices covering multiple scenarios like working at heights, material handling, heavy vehicle management, working at excavation sites, working with HT lines, safety barricading, work permits and working in a marine environment.
To ensure good compliance with safety processes, the Safety App in use at all our project sites has digitized safety processes like safe to start, pre-start inspections, near miss and incident reporting and rectification. The data from this app enables online real-time reviews of safety, and analytics on this data enable trends and patterns to be identified for effective rectification actions and improvements.
Leading the way
L&T has developed a robust online safety training module which familiarizes workmen with safety requirements. As workmen come from different parts of the country, this interactive online training module is available in several Indian languages.
This ensures that there is standardization in the way different parts of the business at different locations in the country adhere to on-time delivery of various products and services. A culture of safety emerging out of action on several fronts including management time devoted to all aspects of safety augment customer satisfaction.
To support education and training with a special focus on helping workmen become specialists in areas of interest, L&T has set up academies across the length and breadth of the country. L&T has won several accolades for Safety from RoSPA British Safety Council. However, the biggest award will be to have 'Zero Harm' across businesses, with on time performance, and without compromising on complete customer satisfaction.
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