Health and Safety - Putting Our People First

Nothing less than Zero Harm

At BlueScope Steel our focus on Health & Safety is integral to the way we do business and nothing less than Zero Harm is acceptable. This past year, our employees and contractors worked hard to further improve our safety performance and the results showed excellent progress has been made.

Even still, we will never stop pursuing our goal of Zero Harm, where every person who enters any one of our sites around the world will leave in the same or better condition than when they arrived.

The following beliefs form the basis for achieving our goal of Zero Harm:

• Working safely is a condition of employment.
• Employee involvement is essential.
• Management is accountable for safety performance.
• All injuries can be prevented.
• Training employees to work safely is essential.
• All operating exposures can be safeguarded.

BlueScope Steel has a comprehensive Occupational Health and Safety Management System in place, which is mandatory in all our operations. Its purpose is to protect the health and safety of our employees, customers, contractors, visitors and the public and to ensure our people are fit and competent to undertake work. The Management System gives substance to our beliefs and details how we will achieve our goal of Zero Harm.

It focuses on three basic aspects: safe and healthy people, safe systems and a safe and tidy plant. Initiatives in these areas are supported by strong and caring leadership, engaged employees and a robust system. Under the Management System, Safety Management Standards have been established. Each business is required to demonstrate compliance with these standards.

BlueScope Steel's safety improvement initiatives have seen a substantial reduction in injuries. We have continued to make good overall progress, with many businesses reporting noteworthy results.

In 2006/07, our Lost Time Injury Frequency Rate (LTIFR) was 0.4, remaining below 1.0 for the third consecutive year. This result compares well to the International Iron and Steel Institute rate of around 4.0. Our Medically Treated Injury Frequency Rate (MTIFR) was 6.5. These rates express incidence per one million hours worked.

Essential to our health and safety strategy is the ongoing effort to further develop our leaders, as is the continued implementation of risk management practices, behavioural health and safety audits, the reporting of incidents and near misses and the identification and prevention of at risk behaviour and at risk conditions.

Zero Harm is our goal. We are doing everything possible to achieve this.