The Global Cement and Concrete Association (GCCA) held its first Global Health & Safety Forum (webinar) on World Day for Safety at Work. The forum consisted of five presentations with coverage of GCCA's guidelines and sustainability toolbox, road and driving safety, contractor management, occupational health, and hotspot activities and countries. 

The forum, which attracted more than 300 participants for the two sessions, included an update on how the GCCA's members were responding to the COVID-19 pandemic and GCCA Cement Director, Claude Lorea, spoke on how the association was seeing "different trends in different regions, and even within regions." 

Richard John Claydon, Cemex's health and safety director, outlined the importance of the GCCA's work in finding key learning points, and establishing reporting guidelines for its members across all the sectors of cement, concrete and aggregates.

The GCCA aims to provide guidance for its members on reducing loss-in-time-injuries and avoiding fatalities with consistent reporting to see who most needs support. It has devised a H&S handbook, best practice guides as well as working with supply chain management and developing a sustainability charter. Safety guidance for reporting also defines key performance indicators across industry, for statistics such as fatalities and loss in time injuries. Supplementary guidance is also documented to clarify grey areas, for example, when an injury becomes a loss in time injury, who is defined as a regular contractor, etc.

Provisional 2019 industry data
In 2019 the association recorded key observations from provisional data it received. It recorded 88 cement industry fatalities, of which 46 per cent were members of the GCCA. This can be broken down to nine cement industry employees, with 67 per cent of the nine accidents occurring on site. A total of 35 per cent of the fatalities occurred with third parties, of which 89 per cent were road fatalities. Contractors also saw 44 fatalities, of which 61 per cent were on site.

A total of 48 fatalities (55 per cent) happened on the road and 81 per cent of this total were behaviour related, while some 78 per cent of these fatalities involved trucks and 79 per cent of them involved contractors.  

The data is further broken down to 45 per cent of fatalities occurring on site, 23 per cent involving moving machinery and 18 per cent involving falls from heights. In total 68 per cent of the fatalities were from the cement sector. The 3Q was also when the highest number of fatalities occurred. In this period work-loads tend to rise and more contractors are employed, Mr Claydon said.

Looking at the data regionally, the Middle East and Africa saw the highest number of fatalities at 35 (40 per cent of all fatalities and 48 per cent of road fatalities), Asia followed with 20, Latin America totalled 15 (Brazil 7), Europe 10 and North America eight.

Benjamin Sporton, GCCA CEO, said: "The GCCA's H&S Working Group, will be continuing over the next 12 months the major priorities with H&S for contractors, road safety and addressing challenges at fatality hotspots." 

The GCCA will hold its second Global Health & Safety forum in 2021.