Occupational Health & Safety Program
Safety
At WKS, safety is the top priority. Safety takes precedence over all business pursuits and practices. Since the onset, WKS has focused on providing a service and product of the highest quality by creating a total safety culture. Our focus on safety as a collaborative effort enables us to perform with minimum risk to employees, subcontractors, public and property. We firmly believe that it is the sum of these efforts that ensures all employees go home safely every night.
Responsibility
We ensure that we have the knowledge, skills, and equipment to conduct our work in a safe and environmentally responsible manner. Through personal and environmental hazard assessments, we are aware of and use care to minimize the negative consequences of our activities. Prior to job activity, all employees are certified with the required safety training and additional courses such as first aid, WHIMS, Construction Safety Training Systems, Fall Protection, and Elevated Work Platform training. At WKS, we promote continual environmental management through the setting of clear environmental objectives and targets, and monitoring progress towards sustainability.
Leadership
WKS employees embrace a high standard of Safety excellence. Through our leadership, we create a spreading effect of total safety on all of our active sites. Through the actions of our President to the newest hire, everyone is motivated to perform to these standards.
Performance
WKS’s overall Corporate Safety performance is demonstrated by the fact that our WCB total injury and illness rates are significantly below industry average. Additionally, we have accredited certification in the Large COR program under the British Columbia Construction Safety Alliance (COR # 4166891120130219HL).
Risk Mitigation
Hazard Analysis incorporating risk is used both in our quality and safety systems. This enables us to primarily identify and quantify hazards based on severity and frequency. Using this information, we are able to implement engineering and administrative controls to mitigate these risks.
Safety by design is an area we are accelerating in. Through training and experience we are engaging in “designing out” the Health and Safety risks at the design and Engineering stage. Processes and designs that we use on scope of works are mitigating risk at the very early stages to ensure a safer and smoother operation.
Accountability
Our Joint Health and Safety Committee is in place to monitor and promote continuous improvement from a managerial perspective. To encourage internalization of safety policies, Safety Coordinators are on all sites monitoring the implementation of safety standards. The sum of these factors has created a comprehensive safety program at WKS.
WKS has accredited certification in the Large COR program under the British Columbia Construction Safety Alliance (COR # 4166891120130219HL).