Safety Week Day 4 - Enriching TMF Capenhurst's Safety Culture

Day 4 of Safety Week is "Take Note Thursday", where Jacobs teams from across the world get together to look at the critical risks that we face every day in the office and on project sites. Today we take note of a landmark safety achievement from our U.K. Nuclear team. 

While critical risks like working at elevation, driving, lifting and dealing with hazardous materials are a threat across most of our projects, when your day job involves working on a uranium enrichment facility it's fair to say that they hold an extra special significance. We're especially proud of the approach taken by our team at URENCO's Tailings Management Facility (TMF) in Capenhurst, England, who recently celebrated the phenomenal milestone of 6,000,000 hours without a lost time incident on site!

URENCO operates three plants at Capenhurst, producing enriched uranium to fuel nuclear power stations across the world and generate electricity. The enrichment process creates a by-product called depleted uranium hexafluoride - known in the industry as "tails" - that can pose a significant chemical hazard. To reduce this risk, URENCO's TMF facility will process the tails into a far more chemically stable form suitable for longer-term storage – a process known as deconversion. 

Jacobs' role at Capenhurst involves all works (design, procurement, construction and inactive commissioning) associated with the construction of the TMF, and supporting URENCO in driving a best-in-class safety culture has been a central priority for the project team. The team has worked tirelessly to create a safe and positive environment for not just Jacobs staff but all workers on the project: introducing preventative measures like free flu vaccinations for all site personnel, “mental health matters” initiatives for staff and contractors, and sharing regular wellbeing-themed communications and interactions with the workforce. 

Another great initiative was the iCare Reward and Recognition Program aimed at rewarding outstanding safety behaviors. The program focuses on project specific significant risks, promotes a positive safety culture and enables trending of the resulting behaviors. 

The team is equally proud of their "Stop the Drop" campaign, which took as a starting point the fact that "being struck by moving objects" was the leading cause of accidents in the U.K. construction industry. To mitigate these risks, all construction areas were furnished with “Stop the Drop” boards containing tool tethers, mats for working on grated areas to prevent materials falling through, bolt boxes, etc. These proved popular immediately and are now widely used by site operatives, highlighting the positive safety culture that Jacobs has helped create on this project.