Good day,
As this year is quickly ending, it is important to point out some highlights of 2024 and encourage us to launch into 2025 ready, willing, and able to be more successful than the previous year.
In Safety, we have continued to see a gradual improvement with fewer employees being hurt at work, an actual 22% improvement. Well done to the management and staff as they have navigated 2024 by first identifying the hazards, and then making a plan to eliminate or mitigate the hazard. I know we always would like to eliminate all the hazards but we must be realistic as we live in Canada and truly only have two seasons; construction and winter.
Our Safety Audits both Grand Prize Safety Award (GPSA – from Mullen) and Risk Professionally Managed (RPM – from MTA) saw improvements in our audit scores. This is important as it shows that we are committed to our responsibility to continue to evolve and develop our Safety Foundation, which is also known as our Health and Safety Program. We are committed to providing a safe and healthy work environment and we do this by providing our employees with new and ongoing training, guiding them by performing observations, and correcting unsafe work practices.
We continue to add telematics and dash cameras into the fleet of power units. We have steadily been increasing this over the past years, closing 2024 with 34% of our power units being equipped with this technology. The goal is to intensify this growth by increasing this number to 76% by the end of 2025. This technology encourages and upholds our drivers to exhibit the best driving behavior possible. When we are displaying safe driving behaviors, the system remains silent. However, when we choose to make bad decisions it will beep, alerting the driver, with the goal and opportunity for the driver to adjust their behavior accordingly.
Our goal at Gardewine has been and will always be that every employee gets to come to work, work safely and return home in the same conditions as they came to work in.
In the first Quarter of 2024 we had a challenging start with a 36% increase in severe injury incidents, we don’t want to repeat that type of performance for a number of reasons, but most important for our employees. We were able to re-focus and get back on track and had less employees hurt in the following Quarters. Again, that only comes through education, training, observation and a desire to be better or be engaged to be better, and for that and for so many other reasons I am thankful to each and every one of you that make Gardewine a safer place of work for you and your co-workers.
From the Safety Department, warm and well wishes as you and your family celebrate the holiday season and have a great year in 2025.
Rob Penner
Senior Director of Workplace Health & Safety.
