At CEMEX Colombia, Safety in the Workplace is an Everyday Lifestyle

Employee safety is of paramount importance throughout CEMEX. For this reason our operations in Colombia have been developing several campaigns to instill this priority among all our employees.

These efforts have started to bear fruit. As of August 20 of this year, 5 of CEMEX’s major cement plants in Colombia have reached more than one year without accidents, and counting. A remarkable example is the cement plant in Bucaramanga, Santander, which has achieved 1,062 consecutive days (almost three years) free of incidents. These positive results are the best incentive to move forward and they prove that the search for the welfare and safety of our employees is a constant practice in our facilities.

CEMEX’s National Health and Safety Manager in Colombia, Darwin Sastoque Molina, states that employee safety “is our top priority and a moral duty: having an incident-free operation will be the result of everyone’s work and commitment.”

Outside of our plants, other awareness-raising initiatives have been implemented in Colombia, such as the Como me Conduzco, or “How’s My Driving” campaign that launched last year. The name is a play on words that also means How am I Behaving/How do I Conduct Myself. Aiming to create a culture of road safety for drivers within and outside of CEMEX, this campaign continues to achieve significant goals such as better fuel economy and vehicle care. More importantly, the main result has been a reduction in accident rates and in responsibility for incidents, demonstrating the increasing responsibility of our drivers to maintain their own safety and the safety of others.

Diana Carolina Vidal Cortés, CEMEX’s head of Corporate Communications in Colombia, helped implement the “How's My Driving?” campaign and considers that it “reflects a comprehensive focus in our efforts and the responsibility to be a truly world-class company, for it benefits not only our employees, but also everyone who is on the road.”

Safety is also a top priority at corporate offices, where CEMEX works every day to maintain employee health and safety as well as information security. At the CEMEX offices in Bogotá, several initiatives have been implemented to promote best practices, such as programs to encourage order and cleanliness, inoculation and general health-check campaigns, campaigns to promote the proper use of stairs, along with recommendations and guidelines to save important documents properly and guarantee the privacy of passwords, to name a few.

Strengthening the culture of safety is a continuous effort in CEMEX Colombia and we keep improving every day. According to Sastoque Molina, going forward, “a visible leadership at all supervisory levels is the key to leverage the changes that are expected to contribute positively to building a lifestyle focused on safety.”

CEMEX is a global building materials company that provides high quality products and reliable service to customers and communities in more than 50 countries. CEMEX has a rich history of improving the well-being of those it serves through innovative building solutions, efficiency advancements, and efforts to promote a sustainable future.