Sushil Kumar Panigrahi is a core EHS professional with more than 24 years of experience in Construction, Engineering, Agro-based Industry, Automobile, Energy, and Corporate EHS function. Being into EHS leadership role for more than 11 years, he is currently heading the EHS function of Tata Power Southern Odisha Distribution, a power utility having more than 17000 workforces and spreading across 50000 square KMs. A team of more than 100 EHS professionals are associated with him directly or indirectly.

Safety and health cultural transformation journey in a legacy organisation where Sushil Kumar Panigrahi took the challenge and made efforts to establish a base for the Safety Management system by deploying necessary resources and awareness drives. Examples are: 1. Mass Safety awareness drive was undertaken by trainings with a coverage of more than 5,75,000 safety training man hours which is equivalent to 21 hours of training per employee. 2. For ensuring safe work, PPE and safety tools are essential. He has planned and executed sourcing of 100% PPE and safety tools for both employees as well as business associates. 3. He has established the mechanism for ensuring 100% reporting of incidents and investigation of those in timely manner. 4. Annual Safety Plan was established to implement a safety programme 5. He used various innovative approaches to improve the safety like development of Smart Isolation, Suraksha Kavach for PTW, Surakhsa Prahari for safety observations, technological interventions, Youtube channel, Web Portal Safety Tab, short videos for WhatsApp circulation, online quiz completions, etc. 6. Achieved sharp reduction of 67% in workplace injuries during the year 7. Achieved various state, national, and international level awards in the field of Safety & Health during the year

Following Initiatives were initiated during the year: 1. Safety governance system for further strategic implementation of Incident Investigation & Safety Observation (II & SO), Rules & Procedure (R&P), Capability Building (CB), Contractor Safety Management (CSM), safety innovation & technological intervention, office safety which includes housekeeping, and public & animal safety. 2. Monthly Section Level Mass Meeting at 135 Section 3. Felt Leadership Workshop for executives and business associate leaders 4. 50 Nos of step changes and safety interventions 5. Community node identification pilot project launched along with NGO’s for sensitisation 6. BBS training cum workshop 7. Back to basic, theme-based safety campaign 8. Defensive divining safety training 9. Safety attitude survey conducted 10. Public electrical safety awareness drive

Safety is a core value of Sushil Kumar Panigrahi's organisation and their continuous commitment to maintain a safe and healthy workplace with aim of “Mission Zero Harm” is at the most top priority. In 2024, they had geared up with implementation of modern edge technological and innovative approaches to strengthen their daily operational safety practices and monitoring. Occupational Safety and Health is given a lot of importance at his company to inculcate it in the DNA of each individual. His team undertakes numerous initiatives to ensure the working environment is safe and the workforce is happy and healthy. In addition to ensuring that all necessary safety precautions are in place, his company also takes various proactive measures by organising various safety campaigns for their consumers and employees to minimise chances of electricity related mishaps. The safety of their employees, business associates, and public is their top most priority and they are working collaboratively. Support was always given by their top management who is always open to new initiatives and improvements. Though the influencing down the line was quite challenging, their team overcome it through continuous connects and drives.

With a key focus to enhance the safety excellency journey and improve the safety in daily operation and project work, various key initiatives, projects, and programmes are executed during 2024. At TPSODL their key focus is providing the best safety equipment, tools, PPEs, and monitoring mechanism at the field level to execute the work safely. All the initiatives resulted in sharp reduction in workplace injuries. Their safety and health management system is one of the leading approaches for achieving better safety performance. Apart from employee and BA’s safety, they are also continuously taking proactive initiatives toward the public and animal safety improvement to cut down the public and animal incident due to poor safety awareness, unsafe electrical safety practices, unauthorised hooking, unauthorised construction, animal poaching by unauthorised hooking on TPSODL line, etc.

The following are attributes as a Safety Influencer that helped Sushil Kumar Panigrahi a lot in achieving better Safety and Health performance: 1. Strong domain knowledge with a long experience in the field (i.e. safety standards, procedures, best practices around the word, etc.) 2. Strong communication skill to engage the workforce on safety 3. Fostering a culture of openness and trust among workforce to share their safety concern and new method of solutions 4. Culture of continuous improvement by setting targets 5. Innovativeness to new technology, ideas, and digitalisation of safety system 6. Ready to take challenges on Safety & Health