Published on February 11, 2019
Tata Business Excellence Group (TBExG) organised a two-day Conclave to highlight and share best practices in safety and health. The Conclave took place on January 29-30, 2019, and was held at Vivanta by Taj - President, Mumbai. A total of 90 participants from 35 Tata group companies participated in this event.
The introductory address by S Padmanabhan, Executive Chairman, TBExG, on the ‘Safety Journey at Tata’, marked the beginning of the two-day event. Mr Padmanabhan also took the participants through the role that the Group Safety & Health team played and the key initiatives that were being undertaken at the group level. It was followed by a talk on ‘Zero accidents, healthy and clean environment - the Bosch India way’ by Dr Andreas Wolf, Joint Managing Director, Bosch India.
The next session was by Gaurang Baxi, Chief Safety Officer, Tata Power, who discussed an initiative at Tata Power called ‘Fire Index’.
The post lunch session began with a session on the ‘Role of leaders in preventing serious injuries and fatalities at the workplace’ by Paresh Thakkar, Regional Envt. & South Asia EHS Leader, General Electric. Mr Thakkar provided insights into various new safety theories such as ‘drift theory’ and ‘SIF (Serious Injuries/Fatalities) Incidents’. This was followed by Amit Kumar Singh, Chief Process Safety, Tata Steel, who provided insights on ‘Process Safety Management - Center of Excellence (PSM-COE)’.
The day ended with presentations on ‘Safety: A turnaround journey’ by Alok Singh, Plant Head, Tata Motors, Pune, and ‘Global industrial hygiene priorities and lessons learned’ by Maharshi Mehta, President, International Safety Systems, Inc.
The second day of the Conclave began with a session on ‘Safety culture transformation at transmission & distribution SBU’ by Desh Raj Pathak from Tata Projects. This was followed by a ‘Crisis management overview’ by Col. Sanjiv Bhalla, VP - Security & Crisis Management, British Petroleum.
Next up, Vistara’s Captain & VP - Safety Management, Ashutosh Varma, spoke about ‘Aviation safety management’. In his sessions, Mr Varma, talked about how ‘Zero-tolerance’ is an important element in the aviation safety culture. Then, Prof Seema Unnikrishnan of NITIE focused on ‘Emerging safety & environmental legal requirements’.
A talk on ‘The quality of management - safety as an indicator’ was shared by Sanjib Bezbaroa, Vice President - Corporate EHS, ITC. After that, Shakti Ghulati, Principal Consultant & Business Head - Chola MS Risk, provided insights about ‘Warehouse & logistics safety’.
In light of advancement in technology and safety at the workplace gaining importance with every passing day, Mukul Kumar and Rajiv Desai from Tata Communications threw light on the technological interventions in managing safety at their company.
At the end of the day, Gautam Gondil, AVP, TBExG, summed up the two-day event and also delivered the vote of thanks.