The 2nd Annual Health, Safety & Security Forum, organised by Health, Safety & Security Review Middle East magazine, is taking place at Le Meridien Dubai Hotel & Conference Centre today and tomorrow. The conference opened with the keynote speech by the head of occupational health and safety at Dubai Municipality Raed Al Marzouqi, on heat stress management in workplace
Dubai Municipality has also launched new safety posters this year in four languages for the convenience of the multinational workforce in Dubai on Heat Stress.
"Winter is coming, but the importance of heat stress management does not diminish," Mr Marzouqi noted. He said that it is important to understand the impact of heat stress at work. He also underlined the factors affecting illnesses induced by heat and steps to overcome them.
Preventing heat stress is necessary but so is incident reporting in case of an accident. Dr Huda Al Salmi, who is the head and section head at Abu Dhabi Municipality (ADM), spoke about the rise in cases of incident reporting in the emirate and the launch of ALDAA software with Abu Dhabi Occupational Safety and Health Center (OSHAD) for the ease of reporting the incidents online. The ADM is also working with Abu Dhabi Police and hospitals to better collect and manage incident reporting.
Mohammad Ali Paris Cayongcat, IKEA, spoke on sudden cardiac arrest (SCA) in the work place. He said, it is good to equip employees with emergency planning methodology. "In a workplace, there could be a chance of an employee suffering a sudden cardiac arrest (SCA). It is, therefore, necessary to have first-aid trained employees to effect the best outcome, access to and understanding of automated external defibrillators (AED)."
Besides exciting speaker presentations, the Forum also hosted region's first-of-its kind mock court trial on justice after a serious accident at the workplace. Abu Dhabi-based Al Tamimi & Co's head of litigation Mohamed Al Marzouqi and senior associate litigation Omar Khodeir demonstrated how parties are held responsible in case of accidents onsite.
Day One's panel discussion revolved around the topic Tourism Growth Questions Enhancement of Safety Culture and Crowd Management. With a million tourists expected for Expo 2020 Dubai, questions on how to tackle crowd and help crowd management were touched upon. According to Cayongcat, the first step, as mandated by Dubai Municipality, is emergency planning in the workplace and arrange emergency response team. Ghaleb Abbusa stressed on appropriate building designs that aid faster evacuation.
Speaking about evacuation, Gary Hicks, general manager, Emergency Management Consultant at Evac+Chair, said that knowing evacuation process goes a long way in saving lives. He provided details on how good evacuation processes helped saved lives during the 9/11 incident.
The last session of the day was governed by ENOC's executive director, EHSSQ & Corporate Affairs Dr Waddah S. Ghanem and IOSH vice-chair Rob Cooling who spoke about how to develop EHS practitioners into executive business heads. A 10-step strategy, Dr Ghanem detailed the skillset required by EHS specialist to become a manager and thus the management understands more about business.
The event is endorsed by Dubai Municipality, Abu Dhabi Civil Defence and Abu Dhabi Municipality and sponsored by ATG Lanka, Leader Healthcare, Evac+Chair, Al Hoty-Stanger Laboratories, Safe Mobility and ARASCA.
