Our People | Safety
Safety Gearbulk strives to maintain focus on improving safety on our vessels, for our sea staff and shore contractors. The safety campaign initiated in 2013 continued in 2014 to further strengthen our drive on personal safety issues and safety for others. The campaign included Drills, Smoking On board, Safety Area Inspections, Fire Fighting Appliances, Life Saving Appliances, Hot Work Permits, Enclosed Space Entries and Work Aloft and Outboard. Gearbulk saw a significant drop in personnel injuries in 2014 and also improved our average score, largely as a result of the enhanced focus on safety and the compliance of our seafarers during the campaigns. The most objective measure of the safety on-board our vessels is Lost Time Injury frequency (LTIF), see Table 4. This is a measure of the number of hours a seafarer is unable to work following an accident and is calculated per million working hours. In 2014 the amount of injuries decreased to a record low and no injuries resulted in disability or fatalities. Our increased focuses on safety through our campaigns as well as strict internal audits have been contributing factors to this success.
Year
%
2009
2.49
2010
1.44
2011
1.76
2012
1.9
2013
1.1
2014
0.9
Table 4 Lost time injury frequency (LTIF)
Gearbulk has a policy of reporting near misses, which are also referred to as "no loss incidents." The number of no loss incident reports has increased quite significantly during 2014. Again, our increased focus on safety throughout the year and our staff being more familiarised with the reporting procedures (that were introduced in 2013) are both contributing factors to this. Year
Number of reports/vessel
2012
5.86
2013
6.44
2014
15.2
Table 5 No loss reports
We also record injuries to stevedores on owned and time chartered vessels. As we generally do not have access to any statistical data on time off work as a result of stevedore accidents, reporting is limited to frequency and severity of injuries. There were no stevedore fatalities in 2014. Year
Minor injuries
Serious injuries
Fatal injuries
2012
17
7
1
2013
16
2
0
2014
12
10
0
Table 6 Stevedore injuries
22