Safety

Our safety goal is to eliminate serious incidents and injuries
We achieved a 10% reduction in our medical incident rate since 2016

We believe safety is a Core Value and Business Priority, that all accidents are preventable, all employees must have ownership of safety and that safety is performance-based and must be managed.

We provide safety leadership, measure and evaluate leading indicators, proactively manage safety and continually improve, have effective Safety Management Systems for employees and contractors and meet or exceed compliance with health and safety regulatory requirements. For us, safety excellence is also operational excellence.

We firmly believe that our company’s safety success depends on every person’s active involvement and enthusiastic participation. Our Health and Safety Policy, in conjunction with our Safety Goal, sets out the overall objectives and principles for occupational, health and safety management within our safety system.

Within our safety program, we have identified key responsibilities for Management, operating site manager, employees and contractors, as detailed in our Safety Policy.

We track common safety statistics, and the focus of our attention on the leading indicators of safety performance. These include near-miss incident recording and field level hazard & risk assessment activities that have a demonstrated correlation with safety improvement.

In 2015, West Fraser implemented a long-term Safety Improvement Plan (SIP) that focused on leading indicators as a measure of safety performance, a broad range of risk reduction strategies and prevention by design for the implementation of best practices across the Company. The Program has identified three key areas where improvement to our processes and initiatives would help to eliminate or mitigate the rate of serious incidents and injuries within the company. They are:

Safety Program and Systems Development

Recording, reporting and a focus on leading indicators
Education, training and leadership
Safety Program and System Development
Serious Injury Fatality Determination & Root Cause Analysis

Operations

Hazard & Risk Reduction
Prevention Through Design
Physical plant (Wood Dust Mitigation & Control, Process Safety Management)

Safety Culture Development & Risk Tolerance Reduction

An internal company safety team is tasked with ensuring all divisions have access to, use and implement company safety plans, practices, coordinate the appropriate safety training for all personnel and that safety improvements are implemented as new safety risks and hazard are identified, and safety remedies are circulated.

West Fraser’s safety audit protocol incorporates 26 elements and approximately 275 questions about safety equipment, planning, preparedness, risk assessment and hazard prevention.

Contractors and contract workers are required to be educated in and comply with all health safety rules imposed by West Fraser, the Contractor and local OH&S Regulations. Further, contractors must receive a safety indoctrination before they begin work at any West Fraser site.
West Fraser is a member of the BC Forest Safety Council (BCFSC), an industry-funded and directed Health and Safety Association (HSA) for BC Harvesting, Manufacturing and Wood Pellet sectors. West Fraser is an active participant in the Council’s Manufacturing Advisory Group (MAG), which helps support industry to achieve continuous improvement in safety performance across the industry. MAG's core goal is to achieve workplace environments free of injuries, incidents and near miss events.
Our operations in B.C. are certified SAFE Companies by the BC Forest Safety Council as part of the Manufacturers Advisory Group (MAG) audit tool.
Our operations in Alberta are certified to the Partners in Injury Reduction (PIR) Program through Alberta’s Workers’ Compensation Board and administered by the Alberta Forest Safety Association.

Governance & Accountability for Occupational Health

The Board’s Environment, Health and Safety Committee holds accountability over the appropriateness of the administration of our process safety and occupational health and safety programs, the Company’s state of readiness to respond at an operational level to crisis situations and be current in the proposed health and safety legislation or regulations which may have an impact on the Company’s activities.

The President & CEO and West Fraser’s Executive Leadership Team reports to the Committee on the nature and extent of compliance with occupational, health and safety policies, standards and applicable legislation and the nature and extent of non-compliance.

Learn more about our governance approach (GRI 102), the Charter of the Board’s Environment, Health and Safety Committee, and our Safety Policy.

The President & CEO oversees performance and compliance for the systems and process of organizational occupational health and safety.
The Safety Manager is responsible for developing, maintaining and ensuring compliance with company-wide occupational health and safety program that includes core guidelines and systems to measure ongoing effectiveness and regular auditing of performance.

403-2 Hazard identification, risk assessment, and incident investigation

Safety education, training, hazard awareness and risk control planning form the foundations of our safety programs for management, supervisors, employees and contractors.

All new employees are provided with a safety orientation before they begin work at our facilities. Every division is responsible for developing a Division-specific Health & Safety plan, and for establishing clear position-specific responsibilities for every supplemental safety system or program that is in effect. We review divisional plans on a regular basis. Health & Safety near-miss reporting is collected at all sites and shared between our divisions to facilitate development, sharing and implementation of lessons learned and preventive measures.

For every regular production and maintenance position at the facility, the Division is expected to have conducted a formal (i.e. documented) hazard identification and risk assessment process. A plan will include identifying each position, the specific tasks performed in that role, the hazards associated with each task, and an assessment of the “risk” associated with each hazard (i.e. with no controls, existing controls and possible/future controls).

All of our operations in the U.S. and Canada are audited against West Fraser’s standard safety audit protocol by an independent third-party auditor, with audits completed every three years. Our goal is that internal action plans from the West Fraser safety audit will be divisionally reviewed and updated quarterly.

Recordable incidents and near-miss serious incident reports are distributed to senior management for further review and action. Quarterly, a core safety group that includes our President & CEO, operational Vice-Presidents and lead safety team, meet to evaluate the progress of our safety initiatives and to review safety results. Further reports are made to our safety committee (Healthy, Safety & Environment Committee), comprised of at least three members of our Board of Directors (“Board”), which meets regularly.

In 2018, we released a revised Drug and Alcohol Policy for Canadian workers in safety-sensitive positions to coincide with the legalization of marijuana under Canada’s Cannabis Act in October. West Fraser uses the Canadian Human Rights Commission (2017a) definition of a safety-sensitive position is one that “if not performed in a safe manner, can cause direct and significant damage to property, and/or injury to the employee, others around them, the public and/or the immediate environment.”

The standard we expect of all employees in safety-sensitive positions is to be “Fit for Work” unless an alternative arrangement has been put in place with their supervisor in advance of their shift. It is an expectation across our operations that employees are cognizant of the potential safety risks related to impairment by legal or illegal substances in the workplace and that every employee arrives at our workplace “Fit to Work.”

403-3 Occupational Health Services

West Fraser supplies all of the necessary protective equipment employees’ require for their work in our facilities.

The Company contracts with registered and certified health professionals to conduct occupational health services, such as the hearing tests conducted at all of our mill sites.

For the purposes of hiring into safety-sensitive positions in the US and Canada, all employees go through pre-employment assessments with independent, accredited third-party providers.

Specific to Canada, we employ a Canadian medical officer who retains any medical information in an exclusive- access, third-party system in compliance with Canadian medial record and privacy legislation. Managers do not have access to detailed health information for employees, and personal health records are not retained by the Company.

403-4 Worker participation, consultation, and communication on occupational health and safety

West Fraser establishes resources at the local (facility), regional, business unit and corporate levels. Every mill has at least one on-site Occupational Health & Safety Resource tasked with being a central resource for ensuring training, standards, processes and procedures, roles and responsibilities and prevention measures are in place. This resource also supports the recording of near misses and incident reviews, key performance indicator trends, reporting and investigation obligations, inspections by relevant authorities, and both internal and external audit results.

Our mill and woods operations hold health and safety meetings regularly on topics relevant to the specific requirements of the type and scope of work.

We believe strongly in ensuring all employees have a safe place to work. All of the Canadian manufacturing facilities have joint worker/management safety committees. Where they are not in place in our U.S. operations, we are establishing these committees. In our unionized facilities; union representatives participate in joint union-management safety committees. We work with trade and sector unions and other employee representative organizations as defined by local regulations to improve workplace health and safety.

403-5 Worker training on occupational health and safety

Training is a key component of the maintenance and improvement of our safety programs.

We require all new employees to receive the appropriate level of health and safety training for their work environment, including comprehensive training during an employee’s initial orientation or onboarding process at their local facility.

We continue safety training through correct work procedures, safe work observation programs, our Hazard Alert information system, internally-delivered courses, ongoing workshops and certification, and crew talks ranging from specific certifications to safety behaviour awareness training conducted on- and off-site through a combination of classes and computer-facilitated training.

403-6 Promotion of worker health

West Fraser offers benefit packages and comprehensive pension plans for all full-time employees and part-time employees (this includes interns, co-operative education students and temporary employees) in the U.S. and Canada. Our benefit packages include Medical care, dental care, disability benefits, life insurance, accidental death and dismemberment insurance, retirement programs and pension plans including RRSP programs (Canada) and 401(k) plans (U.S. operations).

All part-time employees receive health benefits and access to occupational health services. From time to time, individual facilities will make arrangements with local health care providers to visit a site and provide basic public and community health services or health monitoring for our employees.

All of our employees have access to an employee & family assistance program (EFAP) 'hotline,' a confidential counselling service for West Fraser employees and their dependents.  This service is provided via a third-party counselling provider via telephone or in-person as the situation requires at no cost to the employee.

403-8 Workers covered by an occupational health and safety management system

The occupational health and safety statistics provided here cover workers who are employees and contract workers who are not employees but whose work and/or workplace is controlled by West Fraser.

Contract workers hours are continuous and equivalent to full time. Safety statistics do not include labour and service contractors who are hired to complete limited duration work.

403-9 Work-related injuries

Health and Safety statistics 2018

Health & Safety Statistics	2016	2017	2018
Number of recordable work-related injuries	273	241	269
Medical Incident Rate (MIR) Rate of recordable work-related injuries	3.27	2.81	2.93
Number of Lost Time incidents	77	79	79
Rate of Lost Time Incidents	0.92	0.92	0.86
Number of work-related fatalities (Employee)	1		1
Number of work-related fatalities (Contractor)		1

Notes:

A work-related recordable injury is defined as an injury to an employee on the job that results in an employee receiving medical treatment (MT), being absent from the workplace for at least one full work day due to a work-related injury (LT) or medical treatment with work restrictions (MTWR). The main type of work-related injuries experienced in our operations are hand injuries from being caught in or between physical objects.
West Fraser calculates Medical Incident Rate (also known as MIR) by adding the number of recorded medical treatments, lost times and medical treatment with work restrictions cases per 100 full-time equivalent employees per year and dividing it by the exposure hours ((LT+MT+MTRW) X 200,000 / Exposure hours).
200,000 is equivalent to 100 employees working 40 hours per week for 50 weeks.

403-10 Work-related ill health

Serious medical conditions attributable to work-related ill health are not a significant risk within our company operations.

Wood dust is recognized as a hazard and due to our manufacturing process, is present in our manufacturing facilities. Wood dust health effects include irritation of the eyes, nose and throat, skin, and respiratory system effects or allergic reactions.

As a company, we have invested significant capital, effort, and in many cases have re-engineered the equipment in our facilities to reduce workers exposure to wood dust in our facilities. Our mills are responsible for creating comprehensive, site-specific, Wood Dust Mitigation and Control and Fire Safety Plans, which are a multi-factor strategy to control and address wood dust accumulation through the implementation of our Corporate Wood Dust Mitigation & Control Policy.

Within a collaborative industry working group, West Fraser was recognized in 2014 for our contributory efforts to improve the industry’s performance in managing wood dust with the Lieutenant Governor of B.C.’s Safety Award for Excellence in Systems Safety.

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Safety

Safety Culture Development & Risk Tolerance Reduction