Who we are
Safety
Safety is a core value at all our businesses. We believe that all injuries are preventable and our aim is for all employees to go home safe and healthy at the end of each day.
Rio Tinto's activities involve working on the surface and underground with large, heavy equipment, explosives and chemicals, sometimes at extreme temperatures. We also face normal industrial hazards such as driving vehicles, working at heights and operating machinery with dangerous moving parts.
Rio Tinto has one of the best safety records in the industry. We actively manage the safety of all those who work on our sites - employees and contractors alike.
Complex mineral processing facilities such as smelters, refineries and concentrators require particular attention to process safety. We have conducted risk assessments of major process hazards across the Group to prioritise activities and capital investments effectively. Implementation of these actions will remain a focus area in 2008.
In 1998, the Group embarked on a drive to improve its safety. Since then, the all injury frequency rate (AIFR) has improved by 78 per cent, a good record but not one to be complacent about. Indeed, we deeply regret that in 2007 three contractors were fatally injured at Rio Tinto managed operations. One metal merchant was fatally injured at an Alcan Engineered Products operation in the reporting period after Rio Tinto assumed management control in October. We have thoroughly investigated these incidents and communicated and acted upon the lessons learned. Contractor management will be a key focus for us in 2008.
The lost time injury frequency rate (LTIFR) at the end of 2007 was 0.42 per 200,000 man hours, an improvement of 16 per cent over 2006. The AIFR was 0.97, an improvement of 11 per cent over 2006. We are on trajectory to achieve our 2008 targets in both areas.
It is regrettable that injuries are still taking place at our sites. In order to further embed a strong safety culture, we are increasing focus on individual intentions and behaviour while ensuring we maintain our strong systems and performance standards.
Some key steps we took in 2007 were:
- progressing the key elements of a revised safety strategy to embed safety standards and implement a leadership development programme;
- completing a risk management assessment, which allows risks to be ranked in a practical way for operations; and
- developing a protocol for the conduct of process safety technical risk reviews to reduce complexity and prioritise hazard rankings.
A key factor in the Alcan acquisition was the consistency across both companies on the importance of safety. While our philosophies were similar, Alcan's definitions were different to those used by Rio Tinto and hence 2007 performance is not comparable. Work has commenced to create a 2007 baseline for Alcan using Rio Tinto definitions.
Alcan's recordable case frequency rate was 0.82 at the end of 2007. This represents a 29 per cent reduction over 2006 and an 84 per cent reduction over 2001. This performance was 23 per cent better than Alcan's target for the period. The lost time injury illness rate also declined by 28 per cent but remained eight per cent short of the 2007 target.
Some notable examples of Alcan's success in reducing these rates include controlling hazardous energy sources from upstream operations and development and roll out of large scale Man-Machine-Interface programmes in downstream operations.
