‘Living the safety culture’: Dekra Industrial achieves its 8th consecutive NOSCAR Award with highest-ever score
Showcasing its ongoing commitment to safety, which runs like a ‘golden thread’ throughout the company, Dekra Industrial SA is pleased to announce the achievement of its 8th annual NOSCAR safety award – the highest safety honour which can be bestowed on a business by the National Occupational Safety Association (NOSA).
Ingrained safety culture
As part of its global parent company, Dekra Industrial in South Africa has played a major role in the fields of NDT and inspection locally – across a wide range of industry sectors – for many years.
Dekra Industrial’s Health, Safety and Environment (HSE) Manager, Carina Kleinhans, explains: “This award highlights our ingrained ethos of ‘living the safety culture’ across our company, country, and around the clock. The recent NOSA ranking furthermore reflects our highest ever score of 97.48 percent – as compared to our original 2013 score of 92.28 percent.”
Kleinhans adds that Dekra Industrial is a company that is committed to safety from management level through to each team member throughout its nationwide branches. “Every Dekra Industrial employee and contractor is encouraged to keep identifying areas for improvement and risk mitigation and management within the workplace. You could say that every branch and department is interlinked by our safety mindset; while our management team members operate a true open-door policy to hear and attend to any areas of concern,” she notes.
On top of safety requirements
Categories that are audited annually by NOSA include: leadership and worker participation; planning, support and operational; performance evaluation; improvement; safety; health; environmental; risk management; systems; compliance and effectiveness.
“In addition,” clarifies Kleinhans, “legislative requirements can change from time to time, and we are required to remain abreast of this also. A good example is how 2020 brought in new additional reporting factors relating to Covid. Dekra Industrial complied with all new requirements, while not only maintaining but in fact improving our NOSA ranking with an even higher score.”
Dekra Industrial Managing Director Johan Gerber adds: “These audited NOSA results are very pleasing, and we are extremely proud to have improved upon our results – from an already-high benchmark – in line with our desire to be true ‘the heroes of safety’. I congratulate Carina and the entire HSE team – as well as each and individual employee throughout the company.”
“In addition to improving our NOSA score on an annual basis, it is also extremely heart-warming to note that, whenever we leave a site, we are always able to say – with pride – that we worked there safely. In doing so, we are really living our culture of being ‘on the safe side’ and going the extra safety mile,” concludes Kleinhans.
About Dekra Industrial and Dekra Institute of Learning
With 97 years in the industry through its global parent company, Dekra Industrial SA has established a formidable reputation as a leader in inspection services, non-destructive testing (NDT), material testing, laboratory services, Advanced NDT, and asset integrity services, and offers industry training through Dekra Institute of Learning. With a Group presence in more than 50 countries on five continents, Dekra Industrial RSA provides safety solutions across a multitude of industries, including power generation, oil and gas, construction, petrochemical, manufacturing, fabrication, pulp and paper, rail, mining, steel industry and foundries, within South Africa and pan-Africa.
Dekra Industrial SA is a holistic, ‘one-stop’ services provider of NDT inspection, corrosion control with rope access, lifting and drone inspections, Dekra Industrial SA is Level 3 BBBEE-compliant, with 51 percent black woman ownership.
The company is also RD 0034-compliant, a nuclear safety compliance standard and is one of the few NDT companies locally to hold the ISO 45001 certification.
Dekra Institute of Learning is QCTO-accredited and delivers online learning across all industries, in both public and private sectors, with training pitched to all levels of competency, focusing on HSE, ISO and CPD-aligned courses. Classroom-based and distance learning are also available.
Dekra Industrial strives to be recognised as the ‘heroes of safety’.