This question is asked at every level, from technician to project manager, and the panel is listening for a system, not a slogan. “Safety is very important to me” scores 1. A list of the things you actually do, in order, plus one story where you stopped the work, scores 5. NGO and UN panels also score community safety, because their sites sit inside villages, next to schools and water points, with children passing all day.
- Before work: a one-page risk assessment for each activity (excavation, work at height, electrical, lifting), written and explained to the crew.
- Every morning: a ten-minute toolbox talk on the day's tasks and their risks; attendance signed by the foreman.
- PPE issued and signed for: helmets, boots, gloves, high-visibility vests; a harness above 2 metres. No PPE, no entry.
- Excavations: trenches for pipelines and foundations deeper than 1.2 metres are shored or sloped; nobody works alone in a trench; spoil is kept a metre from the edge; open pits are fenced and covered at night.
- Electrical and mechanical: lock out, tag out, test before touch; only a competent person opens a generator or a pump panel.
- Community: a fence, a sign in Somali, a watchman at night, school paths and water points kept clear, a first aid kit and the nearest clinic's number on the site board.
- 1When you see a hazard: stop the work if anyone is at risk. You have that authority, and you say so in the interview.
- 2Make it safe: shore the trench, fetch the harnesses, isolate the power.
- 3Inform the supervisor and the whole crew, not only the person involved.
- 4Record it in the site diary and the near-miss book, with a photo.
- 5Fix the cause so it cannot repeat: a new check in the toolbox talk, a rule, a piece of equipment.