Chevron Makes History with JMJ s Incident and Injury-Free Safety Approach, Refurbishing its El Segundo Refinery with No Recordable Injuries

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Griffin Boyd
6 years ago
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Working with JMJ, we achieved an extraordinary safety result no contractor recordable injuries despite conditions that would predict a significant level of recordable injury.

1 Working with JMJ, we achieved an extraordinary safety result no contractor recordable injuries despite conditions that would predict a significant level of recordable injury. JMJ helped us integrate the entire team, across different functions and backgrounds, to focus on a common goal, Incident and Injury-Free success. Charlie Powers Chevron Project Manager Chevron Makes History with JMJ s Incident and Injury-Free Safety Approach, Refurbishing its El Segundo Refinery with No Recordable Injuries Business Challenges: Located just south of the Los Angeles International Airport amidst the small beach communities that dot the California coast, Chevron s El Segundo Refinery is just one year shy of hitting the century mark. A major employer in the area since 1911, the El Segundo Refinery originally produced kerosene for lamps. The refinery s rich history is so entrenched in the area that the City of El Segundo (Spanish for the second ) is named after the refinery, which was then Standard Oil s second in California. Today, the scope of the El Segundo Refinery is impressive. Covering about 1,000 acres, the refinery features 1,100 miles of pipelines, refines over 285,000 barrels of crude oil per day and employs more than 1,100 people. Transportation fuels such as gasoline, jet and diesel are the primary products refined from the crude oil. History was made at the El Segundo Refinery recently when its st Quarter Event an oil industry phenomenon involving shutdown of a refinery for expansion and maintenance occurred. In the case of the El Segundo Refinery, the event included a complex combination of two large capital projects and four simultaneous, major maintenance turnarounds. All the work was completed with no contractor recordable injuries, an historic achievement according to refinery management. * Certain subcontractors engaged JMJ Associates independently to deploy IIF in their organization. Page 1 of 6

2 The peak number of contractor employees for the event was 4,200 including a mix of union and non-union workers, core contractors, as well as travelers, workers who come from all over the country. Wet weather during Southern California s rainy season, the large number of people working in a relatively small area over 45 days, and a workforce with diverse backgrounds were all safety considerations. According to Chevron project manager Charlie Powers, the maintenance turnaround work took place in four plant areas in early 2009 the Fluid Catalytic Cracker (FCC) gasoline producing plant; the Alkylation Plant (Alky), which produces a high octane, low vapor pressure gasoline blend component; the Vacuum Residuum Desulfurization Plant (VRDS) that treats FCC feed; and the Steam Naphtha Reformer (SNR) that produces hydrogen used by the VRDS. In addition, Powers was responsible for the FCC SCR (Selective Catalytic Reduction) Unit project to reduce NOx in the FCC flue gas, and for the FCC/Alky component of the PRO+ (Process and Reliability Optimization) suite of projects across the refinery. Several other independent projects were also installed in advance of, and during, the event, adding to the complexity. An event involves numerous business challenges as well as potential hazards. It is essential to get as much capital work done in advance of the actual shutdown as possible to keep downtime to a minimum. The focus of management and the workforce is to successfully and safely complete the capital and maintenance projects within the turnaround window so that production can resume on schedule. Delays can incur heavy costs. Client Goals: Powers worked with JMJ Associates to create a strong safety culture for the El Segundo Refinery event, with these goals: Create an Incident and Injury-Free workplace Build a strong safety culture of care and concern in a workforce with diverse backgrounds and priorities Page 2 of 6

3 How JMJ Helped: According to Powers, JMJ s approach to safety encompasses four domains subjective, objective, individual and group. Chevron is world-class on the objective side of safety, Powers said, and noted that JMJ, added an enhancement to the subjective side of forming relationships with the workgroup, getting their involvement and enlisting their support in being responsible for their safety with their own leadership. The Event IIF Safety Leadership Team, formed with JMJ s assistance, faced several challenges initially, including: 1) Rapidly identifying and integrating best practices from the various groups to establish an effective safety culture 2) Discovering creative ways to incorporate the proven elements of IIF with needed elements of JMJ Associates High Performance Projects (HPP ) practice, and 3) Generating the many innovative activities aimed at engaging the workforce in becoming partners in safe work JMJ initiated the engagement with an Integral Safety Assessment process that included interviews with a cross section of management and the workforce to understand their relationship with, and perceptions of, safety in the workplace. With that feedback, the Event IIF Leadership Team distilled the input into common themes and voted on priorities to address. Results of the survey were broadly shared with the workgroup, including which areas would receive added attention based upon the results. Action plans were developed to address safety issues, and these were broadly shared with the workforce. From that basis, a number of activities and competitions were designed to communicate and drive home the idea of safety commitments. For example, the Leadership Team perceived that not all first line supervisors were approaching workers correctly about safety they were telling, not asking, Powers said. First the Leadership Team gave them specialized IIF training. Then with JMJ s assistance, the Leadership Team invested effort into creating a competition asking workers to nominate the first-line supervisor they felt was doing the best job in safety management, and to see how well the training had addressed the concern. By getting workers to submit nominations, the Leadership Team received the data necessary Page 3 of 6

4 to recognize supervisors who were doing a good job of building a safety culture while also educating everyone about what characteristics are most desired in first-line supervisors. Valuable prizes were awarded not only to the winning supervisors but to the workers who nominated them to reinforce the safety culture commitment. Competitions were held and specialized training was provided for each of the targeted elements of the workforce: Short-Service Employees First-Line Supervisors Mentors Safety Watches Safety Professionals Included among the programs to increase safety awareness for the workforce were: IIF Safety Luncheon a series of reward and recognition events that focused on people rather than statistics, with themes and themed menus to add to the appeal. Safety prizes were based largely on participation and programs included slide shows of construction progress and activities. The result was that everyone returned to work with reinforced awareness of safety. The Safety Information Center (SIC) updated the concept of the traditional safety board to be an effective tool in building a safety culture by displaying material that was eye-catching and refreshed often including information about the project s purpose, posters advertising current activities, photos of construction workers and progress, announcements of competition winners, in multiple easily accessible locations protected from the elements. Reinvented the Traditional Safety Prize Giveaway by linking prizes to participation and safe behavior or safe productivity. If they had a raffle, they awarded extra raffle tickets for taking action to prevent an accident or injury, recognizing a co-worker or supervisor for promoting safe work, submitting a suggestion, exhibiting 100% safe behaviors on the job or demonstrating safe ways to improve budget and/or schedule. Variations to the raffle included safety auctions (with a professional auctioneer) and bingo. Here again, extra IIF auction dollars or bingo cards were awarded as incentives in advance of the prize event. The Leadership Team developed creative posters promoting these events and displayed them in Safety Information Centers. Page 4 of 6

5 Got Risk Competition which took place during the turnaround, supporting National Loss Prevention Week and reinforcing the refinery s Loss Prevention System methodology. Prizes were awarded for the best accident prevention actions. The Suggestion Box Updated even the Suggestion Box can produce results and provide opportunities for participation. This program started with a complaint that Safety Observation Cards did not allow worker input for non-safety issues. As a result, a campaign was created that deployed suggestion boxes in all SIC s, deployed posters and forms for input, displayed all suggestions submitted, asked the workers to vote for their favorites, gave an award to submitters of favorites, and implemented the favorite suggestions. The Safety Outreach Theater originally conceived as a way to communicate the safety message with more impact to those who spoke Spanish as a first language. This was later expanded to include English screenings of a number of video titles. The Safety Outreach Theater was held during the lunch hour, lunch was provided, English and Spanish versions of the same title were offered on different days in the same week, the event was advertised at the SIC s. Questionnaires were distributed at the end of each screening to ask what message had been absorbed. Attendance was entirely voluntary. Since the theatre was held during the lunch hour, there were no issues regarding overtime or impacting the project schedule. In addition to assisting with the rewards and recognition strategy, JMJ also provided counsel on the role and make-up of the Safety Leadership Team; conducted Alignment and Completion/Lessons Learned Workshops designed to create one Event team across CVX functions and all contractors; held people-focused IIF Commitment workshops with first line supervisors and above; conducted IIF in Action training for first-line supervisors and HES professionals; provided training so that refinery and contractor personnel could offer customized safety orientations aimed at maximizing worker ownership; supported design of safety challenge competitions to highlight desired behaviors for each target area, build the culture and recognize excellence; and supported outreach to workers with English as a second language, among other program elements designed to build a strong safety culture. Page 5 of 6

6 Work toward building a safety culture continued all the way through to the last day of the event. All the momentum that we had gained needed to be carried across the finish line, Powers said. Working with JMJ, we achieved an extraordinary safety result no contractor recordable injuries despite conditions that would predict a significant level of recordable injury. JMJ helped us integrate the entire team, across different functions and backgrounds, to focus on a common goal, Incident and Injury-Free success. About JMJ Associates: JMJ Associates is a global management consultancy with more than 20 years experience serving large industries, including energy, mining and construction. JMJ provides clients with a powerful combination of strategic insight, deep industry knowledge and superb execution, assisting them to catalyze human innovation for breakthrough results. JMJ is the world leader in project safety consulting, having developed and implemented its Incident and Injury-Free safety approach on behalf of multinational corporations around the globe. The firm s High-Performance Projects practitioners are well-known as trusted advisors to operating organizations, as well as to owners and contractors executing large, complex capital projects. The firm serves its clients from offices in Austin, Doha, Durban, London, Perth and Singapore. JMJ can be found on the Web at. Page 6 of 6

Construction of the Shell Pearl Gas-to-Liquids (GTL) Plant, the World s Largest, Achieved World-Class Workplace Safety Culture on a Massive Scale

Construction of the Shell Pearl Gas-to-Liquids (GTL) Plant, the World s Largest, Achieved World-Class Workplace Safety Culture on a Massive Scale Client: Shell Pearl GTL Plant Industry: Energy JMJ Service: Safety: Delivering Incident and Injury-Free (IIF) Results Results: Logged 77 million-exposure-hours without a Lost Time Injury among a combined