PG&E Corporate Responsibility and Sustainability Report 2020

Plan of Reorganization Commitments

Workforce Safety

A strong safety culture is fundamental to our operations and our performance during the past few years has fallen short of that aspiration. We have not always practiced what we preach and have identified a number of gaps we need to close. We know we can do better and we have to do better.

Workforce Safety Strategy

Our workforce safety strategy includes two major pillars: systems and culture. Systems refers to risk management, equipment, processes and procedures. Culture refers to employee engagement, adherence to established requirements, a sense of urgency for safety, and leadership. Focus areas will include:

Enterprise Safety Management System
  • Design, document and implement a clear, actionable safety plan and management system
Enhanced risk management
  • Identify and assess hazards at the task level
  • Improve risk management standards consistent with leading practices, including critical controls
Contractor management
  • Increased supervision and safety officer presence, stronger safety criteria in the contractor selection process, and safety-focused contractor management training for PG&E employees
Standards
  • Improve our safety technical standards by simplifying them, clarifying them, and making them more protective, consistent with leading industry practice
Musculoskeletal Disorder (MSD) Programs/Ergonomics
  • Use data to develop a proactive approach for identifying high risk physically demanding field jobs for detailed evaluations
  • Office ergonomic specialists will use keyboarding data to proactively work with employees prior to them experiencing discomfort
Safety audits
  • Design and schedule audits to reflect risk-based scope and frequency, with participation from operations and trained auditors
Data management, systems and reporting
  • Improve data capture by including more detail about the reasons behind the most serious incidents
  • Utilize a database to further enhance our ability to digitize checklists, reports and communications, and make the information available to supervisors in the field
Safety culture
  • Emphasize recognizing, reporting and responding to incidents; increase the presence of officers and directors in the field to have informal safety conversations with employees; recognize and celebrate safety practices and accomplishments; and use safety as a dimension in talent management and assessment

To improve the way we work, we recognize that we must work more effectively across our teams and make faster and more efficient decisions to improve our performance and become the company that our customers want and deserve. To achieve this goal, PG&E is establishing a Governance Oversight Execute Support (GOES) accountability model, which will focus on functions—like safety—where clarifying roles and responsibilities will make a meaningful difference.

We will also continue to take a multifaceted approach to protect the safety of the public through our operations. These public safety efforts—which involve numerous departments, people and work—include vegetation management, electric grid sectioning, process safety for gas operations, transportation safety and asset management. Under our new strategy, we will better coordinate the planning for these different components and integrate our reporting; additionally, our Chief Safety Officer will be part of the Public Safety Power Shutoff (PSPS) process, playing an oversight role.

2019 Milestones

Employee Safety

In 2019, PG&E made progress in employee safety with a number of highlights:

  • Appointed an Independent Chief Safety Advisor and launched an Independent Safety Oversight Committee (ISOC) by completing an initial review focused on electric operations and our wildfire safety efforts.
  • Defined our Enterprise Safety Management System by compiling a draft set of policies and standards that set the foundation for implementation.
  • Made progress with our “leadership in the field” initiative by focusing on increasing the amount of time front-line leaders spend in the field with their crews observing and addressing safety issues and concerns.
  • Reduced serious injuries and fatalities (SIF) as part of an emphasis on safety in the field, reporting incidents and creating a stronger safety culture. We also reduced the time to close serious injury and fatality incidents by 42 percent.
  • Continued the Corrective Action Program (CAP) to report and track follow-up on potential safety concerns. Employees from across the enterprise submitted more than 39,000 issues and improvements through CAP in 2019, with submitters reporting a resolution satisfaction score of 3.6 out of 5.
  • Continued technical training for field employees. We delivered 42,000 days of training on courses specifically focused on safety and compliance. We also opened a Substation Training Center focused on electric substation operations and maintenance.

Contractor Safety

A key area of our workforce safety strategy includes strengthening our contractor safety to reduce risk, so our contractors go home safe every day.

We expect our contractor workers to share our commitment to public and workforce safety. Our Contractor Safety Program requires contractors performing medium- and high-risk work to meet prequalification requirements to perform work for or on behalf of PG&E.

PG&E contractors and subcontractors include roughly 2,200 contractor companies, as well as approximately 26,000 individuals. These contractors worked more than 44 million hours during 2019, supporting PG&E’s diverse work efforts.

Our Contractor Safety Standard and associated line of business contractor safety oversight procedures set requirements for managing contract work, including procedural steps for each line of business. These procedures include providing post-job safety performance evaluations of contractor work and sharing lessons learned resulting from safety incidents. We use compliance assessments to evaluate our effectiveness and identify any gaps in how we implement the procedures.

PG&E has also established an approval process for new contractors, those in business less than three years or for existing contractors identified as increasing their staffing significantly, reflecting rapid company growth. This process includes an assessment of the management staff, organizational structure, proposed span of control, relevant work experience, employee training plan, implementation plan and reference checks.

Additionally, for rapid growth companies, we evaluate the contractor’s capacity to respond to the increased staffing by factoring in additional safety measures. In 2019, PG&E reviewed forty-five contractors that were new in business and another fifty-two that grew rapidly.

PG&E has also implemented a contractor safety inspection program, which involves internal safety professionals conducting unannounced job site safety audits to validate contractor compliance with OSHA, PG&E and job-specific safety requirements.

Measuring Progress

PG&E uses a variety of metrics to track our workforce safety performance. In 2019, PG&E had no employee serious injuries or fatalities and we improved our timely reporting of injuries. However, we experienced three serious injuries to contractors. We also experienced an upward trend in our employee OSHA Recordable Rate, Days Away Restricted and Transferred (DART) Rate, and Preventable Motor Vehicle Incidents Rate. These results are not acceptable.

PG&E is committed to eliminating fatalities, reducing serious injuries and improving our injury rates. The table below provides complete PG&E employee safety statistics for 2017 through 2019:

Employee Safety Statistics
2017 2018 2019
OSHA Recordable Rate Footnote 1 3.11 2.94 3.29
Days Away, Restricted, and Transferred (DART) Rate Footnote 2 1.99 1.81 2.05
Serious Injuries and Fatalities Rate Footnote 3 0.01 0.004 0.00
Serious Injuries and Fatalities Count Footnote 4 3 1 0
Timely Reporting of Injuries Footnote 5 69.3% 74.9% 75.7%
  • 1. The OSHA Recordable Rate measures how frequently OSHA recordable occupational injuries and illnesses occur for every 200,000 hours worked, or for approximately every 100 employees.1
  • 2. The Days Away, Restricted, and Transferred (DART) Rate measures how frequently DART cases occur for every 200,000 hours worked, or for approximately every 100 employees.2
  • 3. The serious injuries and fatalities (SIF) rate measures how frequently SIF events occur for every 200,000 hours worked, or for approximately every 100 employees. A SIF event includes fatalities, life threatening injuries and life altering injuries.3
  • 4. The SIF actual count includes fatalities, life threatening injuries and life altering injuries.4
  • 5. Timely Reporting of Injuries is the percentage of work-related injuries reported to our 24/7 Nurse Care Line within one day of the incident.5

While PG&E’s contractor workforce population increased by 11 percent in 2019, the total OSHA Recordable Incident Rate for contractors decreased by 15 percent over the past three years. The table below provides PG&E contractor safety statistics for 2017 through 2019:

Contractor Safety Statistics
2017 2018 2019
OSHA Recordable Rate Footnote 1 0.89 0.93 0.91
Days Away, Restricted, and Transferred (DART) Rate Footnote 2 0.56 0.58 0.47
Serious Injuries and Fatalities Rate Footnote 3 0.011 0.016 0.013
Serious Injuries and Fatalities Count Footnote 4 2 3 3
  • 1. The OSHA Recordable Rate measures how frequently OSHA recordable occupational injuries and illnesses occur for every 200,000 hours worked, or for approximately every 100 employees.1
  • 2. The Days Away, Restricted, and Transfer (DART) Rate measures how frequently DART cases occur for every 200,000 hours worked, or for approximately every 100 employees.2
  • 3. The serious injuries and fatalities (SIF) rate measures how frequently SIF events occur for every 200,000 hours worked, or for approximately every 100 employees. A SIF event includes fatalities, life threatening injuries and life altering injuries.3
  • 4. The SIF actual count includes fatalities, life threatening injuries and life altering injuries.4

The following table provides employee motor vehicle safety statistics for 2017 through 2019:

Motor Vehicle Safety Statistics
2017 2018 2018
Preventable Motor Vehicle Incidents Rate Footnote 1 2.43 2.79 2.91
Serious Preventable Motor Vehicle Incidents Rate Footnote 2 0.29 0.19 0.35
  • 1. The Preventable Motor Vehicle Incidents Rate measures the number of incidents occurring that the driver could have reasonably avoided, per 1 million miles driven.1
  • 2. The Serious Preventable Motor Vehicle Incidents Rate measures preventable incidents that included towing, over $5,000 in damage to a PG&E vehicle or any party needing treatment away from the scene.2

PG&E also actively tracks several leading indicators which can inform adjustments that need to be made before a potential incident occurs. These measures will help us more deeply embed safety in our operations and to encourage employees to speak up. They include:

  • Corrective Action Program participation rate
  • Percent of Corrective Action Program issues closed on time
  • Percent of anonymous Corrective Action Program submissions