Soletanche Bachy Global Visual Safety Solutions

Soletanche Bachy employs approximately 11,000 people worldwide across around 50 locations and business units. The specialist foundations and soil-technology contractor approached Jincom to transform its health, safety and environment management system into a comprehensive visual HSE manual deployable across its entire global workforce.

Jincom produced the HSE manual in English and translated it into French and Spanish for deployment across Soletanche Bachy business units worldwide. The creative team is also currently working on an E-learning project that transforms the company's top fatal risks into interactive training modules.

Visual design aids communication

Antoine Morand, Operational Safety Manager at Soletanche Bachy, explained how the HSE manual enables effective communication of the company's health, 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."

Converting the HSE content into a visual manual promotes greater understanding and breaks down barriers of language and literacy. Antoine noted that all workers — regardless of background — can grasp the main topics. The manual is available in both print and digital formats and is actively used in training workshops at 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," Antoine said. HSE managers have confirmed the manual is relevant, meets their needs, and — crucially — the embrace comes from the field: the onsite workforce who are most at risk.

QHSE manager induction process

The HSE manual now underpins the entire onboarding and training process for new 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," Antoine explained.

The company has integrated QR codes within the manual to link to deeper information without bloating the document itself. "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 a QR code — they scan it, they arrive at the lifting folder in our SharePoint library where they can find additional documentation."

Transforming the HSE manual into E-learning

Having completed the HSE manual and built a library of Soletanche Bachy visual assets, Jincom extended the content into interactive E-learning courses. Antoine described how the company's "five killers" — the five risks that can cause fatality if not properly managed — are being transformed into E-learning modules reusing the manual's existing visual library.

• Stop the Drop — falling objects
• Struck By Moving Equipment (People–Plant Interface)
• Risk and cause identification with illustrated real-life incidents
• Prevention measures and end-of-module quiz to reinforce learning

"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. The modules are intended for toolbox meetings, new-joiner inductions and ongoing reinforcement of major risk awareness at all levels of the organisation.

Why Jincom?

Soletanche Bachy is a subsidiary of Soletanche Freyssinet, itself part of the VINCI group. Despite having access to digital resources within Vinci, the company chose Jincom for the specificity of its HSE expertise. "We are working with you because you're visual safety specialists and we don't need to explain many things to you — that saves a lot of time," Antoine said.

Operating in the specialised niche of foundations and soil technologies, Soletanche Bachy felt strongly that generic construction safety content would not resonate with its workforce. "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," Antoine explained.