Health & Safety

Syncrude and its contractors are committed to ensuring the health and safety of our people. Together, we are fostering health promotion and instilling safe work practices among a new generation of workers.

	Rescue Skills Put to the Test Syncrude’s volunteer mine rescue and firefighting personnel once again proved their mettle at two major emergency response competitions. Our teams were among the top performers at the Western North American Mine Rescue competition and the National Fire Fighter competition. The teams’ performance reflects many hours spent training and preparing for emergencies.
	Field Command Post Syncrude has enhanced its emergency response capability with the acquisition of a state-of-the-art mobile field command post. The new unit meets all current standards for effective emergency response planning, monitoring and communication.

2005 Safety Performance

Syncrude employees and contractors enjoyed their best ever year for safety performance in 2005, with a combined lost-time injury rate of 0.05 injuries per 100 person years worked. Nine workers sustained lost-time injuries during the year, down from 17 in 2004, despite a 15 per cent increase in total hours worked on the Syncrude site.

Total recordable injury frequency for the year was 0.75 per hundred person years worked, also a new record. The injury severity rate increased to 3.64 lost workdays per injury, from 1.98 in 2004.

Employee & Family Assistance Program

The 2005 utilization rate for Syncrude’s Employee and Family Assistance Program was 13.4 per cent, down slightly from 14.1 per cent in 2004. The program provides confidential counseling and resource referrals to employees experiencing a variety of personal or job related issues, and also provides coaching to managers and leaders who believe their staff may be facing such issues.

Feedback from clients and managers indicates the program has tremendous value. The vast majority feels their needs were met in a timely way and they appreciate the counsellors’ understanding of Syncrude’s culture and work environment. Benefits to Syncrude include the timely and safe return to work by program clients, and improved employee morale and commitment.

Fatigue Management Program

Syncrude has implemented a new fatigue management program following the success of a two-year pilot project co-sponsored by the Canadian Sleep Institute. The project involved 120 shift workers. Worker fatigue is a well-known safety risk and it can also impact the quality of life of those who suffer from it. Syncrude’s Fatigue Busters program teaches employees about their risk exposure due to fatigue and provides them with job-specific techniques to offset tiredness. The program also works to identify whether the root cause of fatigue is related to lifestyle or a sleep disorder. In the case of the latter, employees are referred to qualified professionals for treatment.

Giving Workers a Safety Voice

Syncrude encourages its employees and contractors to be active participants in spotting unsafe conditions and behaviours so they can be fixed. Toward a safer work environment, workers completed more than 70,000 VOICE cards in 2005, which were then reviewed and acted upon. The cards also reinforce the use of best practices by encouraging workers to thoroughly understand their work environment and the hazards it presents. VOICE is an acronym for Validate, Observe, Intervene, Commend/Correct and Eliminate Incidents.

EH&S Program Guide

In 2005, every Syncrude employee received a new pocket-sized guide to Syncrude’s Environment, Health and Safety program. The guide explains the program’s goals, the management system to achieve it, the central role of employees and the tools they can use to improve Syncrude’s EH&S performance. It is hoped the guide will help foster continued EH&S excellence through the personal commitment of employees.

Oil Sands Safety Association

The Oil Sands Safety Association, which works to establish common training standards and codes of practice for oil sands sites and then ensure consistent delivery of training to those standards to both new and existing workers, has introduced new training requirements for contractor workers. Standards for implementation in 2006 include: Aerial Work Platforms, Confined Space Entry, Confined Space Monitoring, Fire Watch, and a common Regional Orientation Program. To date, more than 30,000 workers have been trained to the OSSA Fall Protection standard. Syncrude was a co-founder of OSSA and serves on its working committees and Board of Directors. OSSA is supporting continued oil sands industry growth by enhancing local safety training resources and promoting worker mobility.

Health and Safety Performance

Healthy Workplace Initiatives

Initiatives	Programs	Info	Company Policy	Special Events	Other
Physical Activity/Active Living
Healthy Eating					healthy choice cafeteria menu
Smoking Cessation
Stress Management
Occupational Health & Safety					onsite health centres
Fatigue Management
Alcohol & Drug Management
Off-the-job Safety & Wellness
As part of our ongoing efforts to support a vital and engaged workforce, Syncrude has many programs to promote healthy living on and off-the-job.

Actions taken by Syncrude in response to stakeholder concerns raised during our stakeholder engagement processes are noted throughout this report; these actions are indicated by the symbol.