Health, Safety and Environment

The most valuable assets of Churchill and its operating companies are people. We recognize our responsibility to encourage healthy lifestyles, train people in safe work practices, and respect and protect our natural environment.

Health and wellness

Churchill’s health and wellness program focuses on mental wellness, physical fitness and nutrition. The objectives of this program are to:

Promote health and wellness ideas and opportunities;
Motivate employees to get personally involved with their own wellness initiatives; and
Encourage employees to take advantage of the resources provided.

The program consists of:

Organized activities such as fitness classes and “break-out” sessions to discuss topics such as smoking cessation and designing your own fitness program;
Subsidized activities, including a partial subsidy of the cost of employees’ physical, mental and/or nutritional activities; and
An employee assistance program, which is a confidential and voluntary support service to assist employees and their families with personal problems and challenges.

Safety

At Churchill, the relationship with our customers and our employees is based on the philosophy that both have the inherent right to work in a safe work place. Our governance, management and operations are structured with this in mind. Our Board of Directors’ Health, Safety and Environment Committee is dedicated to monitoring our health, safety and environmental practices. We also have implemented an operationally integrated Health, Safety and Environment Council consisting of senior management and safety representatives to facilitate the sharing of best practices across all operating units. And we are working to standardize the safety reporting across our business units, all of which have excellent safety records.

Safety guides everything we do. For example:

Laird is committed to ensuring all employees have the training, equipment and procedures necessary to work safely with zero accidents or injuries. In 2010 Laird had zero recordable injury incidents and established the milestone of one million man hours worked incident free.
SODCL strives to be the construction industry’s leader in health, safety and the environment. The SODCL safety program’s goal is to have a perfect safety record on every project. This means setting goals for zero lost time injury accidents and zero incidents resulting in damage to equipment, property or the environment. The program provides a safe and healthy work environment for all project personnel including subcontractors, as well as for visitors and the general public. It is one of the construction industry’s most diligent, rigorous and respected programs.

Environment

Churchill’s operating companies are at the forefront of sustainable building construction, building automation and energy conservation, and industrial energy and emissions reduction. For example:

SODCL provides its clients with value-added expertise to attain LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) sustainability accreditation;
Canem’s new Centre for Building Performance in Richmond, B.C., scheduled to open by mid-year 2011, is designed as a permanent training and testing facility to assist developers and operators to financially justify environmentally friendly systems; and
IHI’s insulation, HVAC and plant maintenance services are all focused on improving the energy efficiency of its clients’ operations.

Churchill’s health and safety programs, goals and initiatives include:

- Laird is committed to ensuring all employees have the training, equipment and procedures necessary to work safely with zero incidents or injuries, and in 2010 Laird had zero recordable injury incidents, a major accomplishment given it also set a company record for number of hours worked.
- IHI’s safety goal is to protect all workers, the public, property and the environment from incident or injury.
- SODCL tracks every hour each employee works without a lost-time accident, providing awards when milestones are reached.
- Broda requires all staff to meet all generally accepted safety standards, including training in WHMIS, First Aid/CPR and safety excellence.