WET IC VIEWS EHS SERIOUSLY TO COMBAT COVID-19

By the very nature of their projects, teams of WET IC are involved in various activities that bring them in close contact with the public. With social distancing and contact avoidance being the main weapons to combat the threat posed by COVID-19, site managements and EHS Managers have had to re-align their sites, their working styles, and their people to the new normal. Lockdown or no, people require water 24×7 and the onus on the IC has been to ensure that water systems are functioning uninterrupted for which personnel had to be arranged, ensuring all the safety precautions.

“Our concerted efforts to create and use digital solutions came in very handy when taking up the fight against COVID-19,” observes K S Sudheesh Kumar, Head – EHS, WET IC, with a small smile, “although we never thought that we would have to use them to fight a pandemic. Digital platforms like VIEW EHS and SafeArmZ have proved to be boons for us. While VIEW EHS helped maintain the EHS requirements at the project sites, the standard workmen habitats, EHS trainings, PEP Talks, awareness programs, frequent interactions and meetings with employees and workmen are all conducted through MS Teams that helped us face COVID-19 very systematically.” Sudheesh adds that the Webinars involving senior management, ATL training on WFH, EHS Head meetings with all EHSOs, and many interactive sessions with the workmen by the EHSOs and Site Management have boosted everyone’s morale including that of the migrant workmen at sites.

Digitally combating COVID-19

The effective digital implementation using View EHS, enabled sites to adhere to and monitor all the necessary safety measures throughout the lockdown period while analysis through Power BI dashboards helped track their implementation across sites. An EHSO could add the observations of unsafe acts, unsafe conditions and unsafe behaviours from the sites, findings from the EHS Walkthrough, action points from Project EHS Committee meetings and EHS Inspection findings into the VIEW EHS Module. 

Irrespective of the lockdown, some sites continued execution works with the Client’s permission or that of the respective State governments, thanks to certain digital solutions. To start work, a Safe Execution Card (SEC) is essential and VIEW EHS became an important tool to raise a SEC without any human intervention or use of paper. “Site engineers could raise a SEC on their mobiles and submit using digital signatures,” informs Sudheesh. “The Section in charge could review the submitted SEC on his mobile and  approve it using a digital signature and finally, the SEC could be approved by the EHSO. This way we avoided human intervention to a
certain extent.”

Digital tools and platforms became essential tools to conduct EHS Training programs and the EHS Department completely migrated to virtual trainings. The COVID-19 precautionary and control measures to be adopted were communicated to all sites through a daily bulletin called ‘EHS Today’ and periodic ‘EHS Alerts’. EHS Alert training was imparted at sites to all levels to ensure a proper understanding of the prevailing pandemic situation among both the employees and the workforce. All training migrated from classroom to virtual mode that, as Sudheesh shares, received extremely encouraging response. He mentions a very successful session on Stress Management training. “I explained the Kubler Ross model very simply and the team members were able to understand a complicated topic in a single session. We all had a very lively and interactive session,” he chuckles. 

Keeping the josh at sites

The Satna-Bansagar Multi-Village Rural Water Supply Scheme is executing a drinking water supply scheme targeting to reach water to 17 lakh people in 1,019 villages of Madhya Pradesh’s Satna District. For Project Manager,
A Elango, Cluster Head, Shaik Yesdani Ahmed and the EHS team of M Saravanan and Sandeep Singh, the challenge was to safeguard the health and safety of their 48 employees and 604 workmen. “Our planning was spot on because not only did we come out of the lockdown with zero positive cases but since our resumption plan was in place we could restart with full vigour,” exults Elango. He has reason to be exultant because he and his team celebrated the resumption of operations by achieving a milestone of laying 2,200 kms of DI and HDPE pipeline in less than a year.

Under the leadership of Project Manager, Pratik Raj, the Moga water supply scheme project team is striving to provide water to 85 villages in the district of Moga in Punjab. COVID-19 put a big spoke in their wheel, “but we took this pandemic in our stride,” remarks Pratik, “and had our mitigation plan in place to not only keep our 17 employees and 120 workmen safe but also continue working ensuring that our people were well protected.” Apart from conducting a safety drill to fight the virus, eminent practitioners from the government were invited to present to the workmen about safety precautions. “Before resumption of work, SOPs were shared virtually with all,” informs CHESM, Rashmikant Chauhan. “Apart from distributing the best of PPEs, we implemented the use of an ergonomically designed COVID Safe Key that saved the staff from touching potential germ-carrying surfaces.” Pratik is proud of a letter of appreciation that the Department of Water Supply & Sanitation presented to him and his team including Construction Manager, Navdeep Kumar Sharma and Coordinator, S Anantha Prasanna Venkatesh for their sterling effort during the lockdown and
even post it.

In a remote corner at Kolgur, some 60 km from Hyderabad, Project Manager, K S Viswanatham and Assistant Manager, EHS, Puttapalli Hazarath Harish Babu, are driving safety at the Mallanna Sagar Reservoir Project site to keep their 210 workmen safe. “Our lockdown lasted for just 3 days after which the Government of Telangana instructed us to resume operations,” informs Viswanatham. 

Keeping the workforce at site and committed were their other concerns and using a carrot and stick approach, Harish Babu proudly shares that “we might be the only site across L&T to have successfully retained our entire workforce!” One of their interesting initiatives was to identify areas and source soil for their embankment work in and around the site to eliminate the risk of travel and exposure.

Keeping the O&M commitments going

Through the lockdown, to honour their O&M commitments, projects teams had to continue supplying water for drinking and irrigation and treat waste water as STPs and WTPs remained operational. Implementation of SOPs for pathogenic infection prevention was ramped up, the result of meticulous random audits across O&M sites that addressed all possible situations. For eg. for situations when an employee is working alone in a pump station at a remote location, particularly outside normal and night working hours. COVID-19 prevention compliances and EHS review meetings were separately conducted for all the  O&M segments across the country.

“At the end of the day, it is the vigour of our practices and the versatility of our digital platforms that have kept us ahead,” rounds off Sudheesh. “The war is yet to be won against the pandemic, but we are winning a few battles!”