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How a pioneering safety culture has helped National Grid
Metering respond to the challenges of the pandemic

s the largest gas meter people feel comfortable in reporting
asset manager in the UK, incidents. They report them more
National Grid Metering must readily and the organisation acts
uphold the highest safety on them quicker. And, as safety is
A standards. The imperative to central to everything NGM does,
safeguard the organisation’s people, this willingness to report incidents
partners and customers is integral and learn from them speeds up
to its operations, and has inspired the organisation’s operations and
an industry-leading safety culture. decision-making generally. This
Most importantly, this distinctive brings obvious benefits to all kinds
approach has helped it act quickly of industrial and commercial
and decisively in keeping the gas customers, but has had a particular
flowing for essential services during impact on the businesses essential
the Covid-19 crisis. to keeping the country running
Developed after detailed studies of during the Covid-19 pandemic.
many organisational culture models, Where the repair or upgrade of gas
the safety culture at National Grid metering infrastructure has been
Metering (NGM) is based on three vital to their continued operation,
principles: trust, report, learn. In NGM has been there to carry out the
practice, this means trusting the necessary work swiftly.
people who work directly with gas In many cases, project lead times
assets to report incidents, and then are being cut to less than a quarter
learning from this reporting to prevent of standard expectations. Even
similar incidents in the future. It’s a in complex situations, the need
straightforward approach everyone for essential services to maintain
in the organisation can understand ‘business as usual’ has encouraged
immediately without special training an agile approach among NGM’s
– and this simplicity has been key to leadership and engineers – an
its success. approach made possible by the
Perhaps more importantly, the organisation’s safety culture.
safety culture works because it Above all, NGM has continued
removes all blame. It recognises serving critical metering
that, although around 80 per cent of installations, with 53,000 planned
incidents involve some sort of human site visits so far during the
error, the root cause in most cases pandemic. The business has also
is a failure in systems, processes or continued to support gas supply
practices. As Phillip Roberts, SHE consumers, reactively making
Specialist at NGM, explains, “When over 80,000 site visits since the
things go wrong, it’s rarely the fault first lockdown. Throughout, its
of the people concerned – there’s teams have maintained Covid-safe
usually a more fundamental problem working practices, with dynamic
behind it. So, when an incident is risk assessments in place, and
reported, any questions are not about following World Health Organisation
‘who’ is responsible, but about ‘how guidelines as well as those of the
and why’ it happened.” Department for Business, Energy
In this way, NGM learns from and Industrial Strategy.
the incident much more quickly, Examples of NGM’s response to
and can get on with identifying customers’ more pressing needs
and implementing the changes or during the pandemic include its
improvements needed to avoid a involvement with a major NHS
recurrence. “We always look at the hospital in the East Midlands. The
system or process first,” continues team was working on a large remedial
Phillip. “If we can make the system project on the primary IP metering
reinforce the desired behaviour, we installation, when another part of
can be sure we’re supporting our the hospital’s equipment – which
people in carrying out their work was not NGM’s responsibility – failed
correctly and, above all, safely.” unexpectedly. This caused a loss
of gas to the vital steam boiler, and
NO FINGER POINTING MEANS NO DELAYS the NGM team on site could not
Crucially, because safety at NGM is all leave knowing the hospital might
about learning rather than blaming, eventually lose its hot water, heating

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