THE HIGHLIGHTS

The Annual Appreciation Dinner held on the 9th March 2024 at Penjuru Recreational Centre. The night began with a heartfelt opening speech from our Managing Director, Mr. Thomas Ng, expressing gratitude for the hard work and dedication of all everyone over the past year. Mr. Ng also emphasized the importance of workplace safety and encouraged workers to voice their concerns on any personal or work-related issues. His message were then translated into Mandarin, Tamil, Bengali, Thai, and Vietnamese.
 

Long service awards were presented to employees who had reached milestones of 10, 15, 20, and 25 years of service in HSB.

The event featured engaging games and everyone’s highly anticipated lucky draw segment, which brought laughter and joy to the evening. A delicious buffet dinner with a variety of cuisines and live stations serving thosai, prata, and vadai was enjoyed by all attendees, including workers, volunteers, and management.

The evening concluded with a heartfelt thank you from the management to all the workers for their dedication and hard work. We look forward to another successful year ahead with the continued support and effort from all our employees. We eagerly anticipate another year of success, driven by the unwavering support and hard work of our amazing team. A big thank you to everyone who attended and made this unforgettable night a resounding success!
 

As part of HSB’s efforts for World Water Day 2024, a group of 32 colleagues participated in the Waterway Cleanup Programme, “Kayak n Klean” organised by PAssion Wave Marina Bay on the 20th April 2024. The objective of the programme is to promote a sense of ownership towards our environment and increase awareness and understanding of the importance of marine life and nature conservation.
 

Our colleagues paddled along the Kallang Basin, cleaning up the trash spotted whilst admiring the scenic view of Marina Bay. The trainers tagged to the team shared valuable insights on the detrimental effects of litter on our waters and wildlife. 

This practical experience not only allowed our colleagues to engage with nature but also instilled a sense of responsibility towards maintaining environmental sustainability. Despite the heavy rain before the clean up, we still managed to collect a total of 15.5kg of trash by the end of the 1 hour session.

WAH!! So serious...

Picking up from where we left off in the previous Highlight, let us go a bit deeper on Work at Heights. In regulation 5 of the Workplace Safety and Health (Work at Heights) Regulations 2013, with regards to Fall prevention plan, it is mentioned that:

1. It shall be the duty of the occupier of every workplace specified in the Schedule, and in which work at height is carried out, to establish and implement a fall prevention plan.
2. The fall prevention plan referred to in paragraph (1) shall be established and implemented in accordance with the requirements of the approved code of practice relating to safe and sound practices for fall prevention.
3. It shall be the duty of the occupier of every workplace specified in the Schedule to ensure that the fall prevention plan referred to in paragraph (1) is made available for inspection upon request by any inspector.

From The Regulation

“Work At Height”, in the regulation means work:

• in or on an elevated workplace from which a person could fall;
• in the vicinity of an opening through which a person could fall;
• in the vicinity of an edge over which a person could fall;
• on a surface through which a person could fall; or
• in any other place (whether above or below ground) from which a person could fall, from one level to another and it is reasonably likely that the person or any other person would be injured due to the distance of the fall;

This means that planning to prevent, manage and mitigate fall is required for all activities in which a person is subjected to falling from height. The measures are implemented, before the activities commence. You can document more details into the Method of Statement in addition to the Fall Protection Plan. By the way, in our projects, we are the occupier in all our projects.
 

Practices to mitigate falling from height:

From the recent WSH Insight published on 9 May 2024, we are advised to always consider implementing travel-restraint systems before personal fall-arrest systems. Personal fall-arrest systems should only be used when other control measures cannot be implemented. 
The table below explains the difference between Travel-Restraint System to Personal Fall-Arrest System.
 

Travel-Restraint System restricts the travel distance of a worker preventing him/her from getting into a position where he/she could fall. In particular, Travel-Restraint Systems are often used during the installation and removal of guardrails at open sides, or when the fall distance is insufficient to deploy a shock absorber.
 

Here are some implementations in some of our projects: