Soletanche Bachy Global Visual Safety

Jincom spoke to Antoine Morand, Operational Safety Manager with Soletanche Bachy, to find out how our visual solutions are helping the company improve their safety efforts.

Soletanche Bachy employs approx. 11,000 people worldwide in around 50 locations or business units.

Jincom has produced a comprehensive visual HSE manual for the company’s entire global workforce. Our creative team is currently working on an E-learning project transforming its top fatal risks into interactive training modules.

The HSE manual and E-learnings were produced in English and translated into French and Spanish for deployment across Soletanche Bachy business units worldwide.

Visual design aids communication

Antoine explained how the HSE manual enables effective communication of the company’s health and safety and environment management system. “We wanted to make it very useful to include everything from our training and induction processes to risks and assessment of accidents. So everything is inside: it is the minimum requirements on the way we work. And it has been designed to be very visual.”

‍“Communication should be visual if we want people to understand what is essential.”

Converting the HSE content into a visual manual promotes greater understanding and breaks down barriers of language and literacy. Antoine added that all workers can understand the main topics. “Communication should be visual if we want people to understand what is essential.”

The HSE manual is available in print and digital formats and Antoine is pleased to see that the manual is being used in training workshops in sites around the world including Peru and Chile. 

“We can extract any page and place it as a poster in the job sites. If we have lifting activities on that site, we can extract the page on lifting activities where we have the main risk and mitigation measures.” 

“I know that that's been really appreciated”. He said HSE managers use the manual and say it is relevant and meets their needs and expectations. However, he added that the feedback is “not something that is coming from the top down,” the manual is being widely embraced and used across by the people who are at most risk: the onsite workforce.

QHSE manager induction process

The HSE manual encompasses all of the relevant information relating to Soletanche Bachy’s health, safety and environment and is used for onboarding and training and as a reference guide across the global teams. “So it's important when we want to deliver a message that we can reach everyone from the top management to the field,” Antoine said. 

Antoine explains how the HSE manual has simplified the induction process for QHSE managers. 

“Four years ago when we started to implement the QHSE manager induction process we had a package with many documents coming from everywhere, it was not really structured. But now when we have a new QHSE manager, we can send only this HSE manual, and he should be aware of the way we work within Soletanche Bachy.”

The company has integrated QR codes within the HSE manual to link to additional information on a topic. “The idea was not to make a booklet of hundreds of pages but to make it more straight to the point. Now, we have only one page on lifting but we have some group notes on related incidents in that topic. Then we have a QR code, they scan it, they arrive at the lifting folder in our SharePoint library where they can find additional documentation.”

Transforming HSE manual into E-learning 

Having already completed the HSE manual and built a library of Soletanche Bachy visual assets, it was a straightforward process for Jincom’s studio to extend the content into E-learning courses. The result is interactive courses using visuals to enhance learning and memory retention. 

Antoine described how by using the manual as a base, the company’s “five killers” or “five risks that can cause fatality if not properly managed” are being transformed into E-learning modules. 

“We reused most of the visuals from the HSE manual in the E-learnings. We don't need to redesign those because they have been done already. And something that is very important is to make those drawings available in a kind of visual library so everyone can use them.”

Starting with ‘Stop the Drop’ which is related to falling objects, Jincom is working with Antoine and his team on ‘Struck By Moving Equipment’ - also known as People-Plant Interface.

Each module identifies the risks and causes, illustrates real-life incidents and explains prevention measures finishing with a quiz at the end of each module to recap and reinforce the lesson.

E-learning goals

“The idea of the E-learnings is to make our training content more interactive. Instead of just showing a PowerPoint presentation or some material that we have used in the past, we can make videos with interactive visuals,” Antoine said. 

E-learning for employees can bring many benefits including driving safe behaviour by showing the consequences when safety measures are overlooked, promoting problem-solving behaviour across workers at all levels and encouraging workers to take ownership of safety rules and report incidents.

“They can be used for Toolbox meetings to reinforce key messages. The idea is to use this as well for the QHSE induction process from new joiners to the experienced guys as a way to reinforce some key messages, especially the major risks,” Antoine added. 

Why Jincom?

Soletanche Bachy is a subsidiary of Soletanche Freyssinet, which is in turn a part of the VINCI group. 

While SB utilises the digital resources within Vinci, the company decided to engage Jincom for more specific HSE content. Antoine explained why Jincom was chosen to produce the HSE manual. “We are working with [Jincom] because you're visual safety specialists and we don't need to explain many things to you, that saves a lot of time.”

Specialised area

Soletanche Bachy operates in a specialised area of construction: foundations and soil technologies. Going into the project Soletanche Bachy felt strongly that generic safety content would not be as effective as specific visual content aligned to their specialised tasks.

“And that's why it's pertinent and people like it because they recognise themselves in the drawings, in the mitigation measures. If it was something very generic for construction, it would not have the same impact.”

“It has to be really close to what we do in our operations. Let's say, we want to look at working at height but see pictures of people falling down from scaffolds. Well, we don't work much on scaffolding because we do foundations. So the risk is the same, but it has to be very specific to our work. 

‍