News & Events / Sustainability Report 2017
Message from the President
I’m pleased to share Summit’s sustainability report for 2017. As a company, we are committed to providing services that offer wholistic value for rights holders and our stakeholders. We strive to be environmental stewards, retain a diverse workforce and continuously improve our financial position. We foster a strong safety culture and have maintained an excellent safety record. We are proud of what we have achieved so far, and we look forward to what we can achieve in the future.
Sincerely,
Russel Orcutt
President
Sustainability Initiatives
We have several programs that help make our staff and offices more sustainable. These initiatives are jointly promoted and managed by our ownership group, IT department and Sustainability Committee. Summit recycles batteries, electronics and writing instruments; composts our organic waste; uses wind energy to power our head office and purchases Forest Stewardship Council certified paper. We encourage our employees to stay active with an onsite fitness room and weekly ball hockey and running club activities. We promote wellness by providing team builders involving physical activity and/or volunteering. As well, Summit offers incentives for employees to spend time giving back to their communities, and for achieving a work life balance.
Environment
Our emission levels are primarily affected by the remoteness of our worksites and the number of times we need to visit each location. We optimize travel by combining proximate jobs into a single journey and by overlapping the timing of sequential services.
Safety
At Summit we know that our business relies on the safe work of our staff. So, we diligently work towards our goal of zero safety incidents through root cause analysis and sharing outcomes with our staff to continuously reinforce our culture of safety first. We also introduced a journey management app, TRIPS, to increase safety while driving.
We succeeded in decreasing our vehicle incidents by 66% since 2015.
Social
Summit is proud of its excellent record of promoting gender balance. In terms of age, we had a relatively young workforce in 2014 and have achieved greater age diversity in 2016 and 2017. Diversity attracts and retains exceptional workers, creates innovation and contributes to employee satisfaction. We believe that diversity creates value for rights holders and our stakeholders.
Landowner Approval
Positive relations with landowners are paramount to our industry. Summit takes this seriously, and we regularly conduct landowner surveys to assess our performance. These surveys have been well received with a response rate of 50-55% per year. We received approval ratings of at least 96% per year with responses ranging from satisfactory to very good.
Financial
Throughout the downturn, we adapted to the new economic environment. We adjusted the type and quantity of jobs we undertook in order to optimize revenue. Our success was achieved in part through the strategic acquisitions of Meridian Environmental Consulting Ltd. in 2016 and Remuda Energy Solutions Ltd. in 2017 which diversify the services we offer.*
*Number of jobs includes data from Summit, Meridian and Remuda from June 2014 to December 2017
Unless otherwise indicated, the scope of this report includes only Summit Liability Solutions Inc.