The entire Ballast Nedam organisation achieves step 3 of the Safety Culture Ladder

The Safety Culture Ladder is an instrument for measuring safety awareness, attitude and behaviour in companies and has a total of five steps. During the assessment process, the emphasis is on the safety culture. The higher the safety awareness in an organisation, the higher the awarded step.

Scores towards step 4

"This achievement is significant," says Ballast Nedam's HSE Division Manager Wilfried Lips about the certificate. "This certificate applies not to one or a few organisational units, but to Ballast Nedam as a whole. Moreover, our scores on a number of aspects were already so high that we are now climbing towards step 4."

In its safety programme, Ballast Nedam attaches value to, among other things, a safe working culture in which employees do not shy away from discussing safe working practices. As a result, everyone can return home safely after a day's work.

HSE director Geert van der Linde is proud of this result, but also sees room for further improvement: 'Within Ballast Nedam, we are taking steps to further embed the focus on safety in the heads and hearts of all our people. We therefore encourage everyone to show personal leadership, at every level of the organisation. From electricians to roofers, from pile-drivers and concrete carpenters to project managers, everyone on the construction site takes the initiative and responsibility to assess safety risks and take appropriate measures. On an increasing number of projects, supervisors and foremen discuss the day's work. What safety risks could arise? And how do we deal with them?"

Sincere care

According to Geert, everyone at Ballast Nedam is responsible for intervening in unsafe situations on the building site. "Intervening in unsafe situations should only be the very last step in a series of safety measures," he says. "We see safety as a complete process that starts in the design phase, when our engineers ensure safe designs. During the procurement process, we make sure that the partners we work with also have the same safety ambition and endorse our safety policy. In this way, long before we have moved a single brick, lifted a single cubic metre of excavated soil or turned a single metre of asphalt, we lay a solid foundation for the safe execution of our projects."

"Safety is a joint responsibility. We take care of each other, speak to each other and make it possible to discuss dilemmas. By genuinely caring for our employees and subcontractors, we let them see and feel that they can make a difference. This approach not only translates into fewer accidents, but also makes people feel safe on our projects."