Together on the road to safety

BUKO Infrasupport is the address for many clients (infrastructure contractors, government agencies, event agencies, etc.) to realize temporary traffic measures. "After all, you can't just start working on public roads," states Chantal Boertje, who started as a secretary at BUKO at the age of 18 and in 12.5 years has grown into KAM manager and MT member. "Often clients provide us with the working drawings and requirements, after which we take care of the complete picture of temporary traffic measures, from advice and permit application to execution and monitoring. For every project and at every location from one of our
nine regional offices."

Safety standards

"Safety is what we sell and is in our DNA," Chantal continues. "For example, we are now certified for five (safety) standards, VCA, ISO 14001, ISO 9001, the CO2 Performance Ladder Step 5(!) and the BRL 9101 focused on temporary traffic measures. We are currently implementing the Safety Ladder Step 3 for certification in November 2021. The Safety Ladder is the perfect tool for us to form our policy around safety. It ensures a solid safety system and provides even more structure within our organization. Thus, it is to useful tool to secure all risks and preventive actions within our organization, but also towards our clients." 

The KAM department operates from the headquarters in Barendrecht and is responsible for compliance with quality, safety, environmental and related certifications throughout the organization. "In 2018, we took important steps to get the topic of safety higher on the agenda internally as well and to make safety manageable and understandable for employees. The KAM department has an important role in this and has created the virtual BUKO employee Vera."

Vera gives advice

Vera is the digital point of contact within BUKO for employees with questions about quality, safety, health and the environment. "She can be accessed digitally via our social Internet 100% BUKO and also has her own profile on there," Chantal explains. "Employees can chat with Vera, but on 100% BUKO they can also fill out forms and work inspections, report accidents and submit improvement proposals. The management of 100% BUKO as well as Vera is done by our KAM department. We get to work with it and pick up issues with the various regional managers. We ensure that Vera is always 'manned' by the KAM team. Vera, by the way, stands for "Safety first, risks taken down. The funny thing is that our employees know that there are other people behind Vera, but that she is still mistaken for a 'real' employee. Actually, safety has become a matter of course within our organization. The certification is more of an underlining of our work. A piece of proof."

Together on the road to safety, that is BUKO's aim. "With Vera, we make safety visible in an approachable way, also in a positive and proactive way. Vera as a character has three important character traits; aware, involved and competent. We expect those same traits from our employees during their work and that is what our internal safety campaign will focus on in 2021," concludes Chantal.