Well traveled is a fitting characteristic for ExxonMobil Baton Rouge, La., Chemical Plant Site Manager Bryan Milton, but for being such a globetrotter, the “newcomer” feeling doesn’t linger.

“When I come to a new site, it never ceases to amaze me how comfortable I feel very quickly,” said Milton, who has worked at seven different locations in both Europe and the United States for ExxonMobil. “The people are of the same caliber, the standards are the same, and even the humor is of the same caliber, albeit in a different accent.”

A native of Scotland, Milton completed a chemical engineering degree at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh. He spent most of his childhood in Pakistan before returning to Scotland to finish his schooling. After graduating from Heriot-Watt University, he joined Exxon Fawley, a refinery and adjacent chemical plant in the United Kingdom and one of the most complex petrochemical facilities in Europe.

Milton said beginning his career working for Exxon at Fawley has helped him because the approach, standards and discipline are the same whether in Australia, the United Kingdom or Baton Rouge.

“We have a lot of consistency across our global organization,” he said. “That is quite a strength and was an advantage being a young engineer.”

At Fawley, Milton worked in various plant and development engineering roles, spending time in upstream natural gas commercial sales and serving as operations supervisor, operations and then as plant manager.

“Starting at a company and on a site where you get to learn at a young age how to interface with operators, mechanics, leaders, headquarters, etc., is quite powerful early training,” he said.

Serving most recently as managing director of ExxonMobil Aviation Fuels near London, Milton then joined the ExxonMobil Baton Rouge Chemical Plant in April 2006. The plant manufactures an extensive range of products, including methyl ethyl ketone, ethylene, propylene, butadiene, benzene and many more that result in end products such as Bandaid® Bandages, crayons, plastic water bottles, paint, rubber and Post-it® Notes.

As site manager, Milton spends much of his time with plant personnel, “rather than guessing what things are like while sitting in your office.”

“We’re only as good as everyone knowing what we’re doing and why, and feeling comfortable and able to make comments about what we’re doing,” he said. “This allows you to communicate in a way that you can’t via e-mail.”

Milton said he likes technical challenges, but the big buzz for him comes from working with teams and seeing what they can achieve.

“That’s the fun of the job,” he said.

Milton’s team-oriented work ethic has made for a nice fit with his Louisiana co-horts.

“This is a competent organization, and something I saw immediately here in Baton Rouge is that when people set their minds to something, they do it and do it extremely well,” he said. “My job is to not screw that up and to help us be even better in the next five or 10 years.”

Centered around ‘SAFE’

About 30-40 percent of Milton’s time is dedicated to the areas of safety and environmental from both a personnel and process safety aspect, making sure the plant’s equipment is well maintained and runs to standards, and ensuring a reliable and environmentally sound operation.

In 2006, the plant documented its best-ever year for avoiding employee injuries and contractor safety and matched it in 2007. The plant was recognized this past fall by the Louisiana Chemical Association (LCA) with a Serious About Fostering Excellence (SAFE) Award, which is given to companies that outperformed their peers in safety, environmental performance and community relations in the previous year.

“Our goal is that nobody should go to work and go home injured or worse — it’s just not right, and it’s no way for us to run our business,” Milton said.

As a heavily regulated facility, the plant is required to meet 14 million individual measured requirements. On average there are about 17 noncompliances, which resulted in approximately 99.9999 percent compliance, according to Milton.

“We take a lot of pride in our environmental performance, so we’d like to be at 100 percent, but we are satisfied with our progress,” he said.

Since 1990, the plant has reduced its NOx emissions by 31 percent and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) by 72 percent.

In coordination with the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality and EPA, the Baton Rouge chemical plant is piloting new infrared camera technology that can pick up hydrocarbon leaks, allowing for regular checks of fugitive emissions.

“It detects any vapors so that we can get to the source more quickly,” Milton said.

Facing the competition

A substantial portion of Milton’s role as site manager revolves around long-term competitiveness. The chemical industry has evolved rapidly in the past 15 years into a global industry, which puts added emphasis on this part of his job.

“We’ve got to realize that we’re not sitting here to serve just the Baton Rouge market with products — we are sitting here trying to compete with very aggressive competitors in Asia and elsewhere,” he said.

Milton spends a lot of time with the leadership at the plant to measure where it needs to be to ensure its competitiveness and to guarantee long-term employment opportunities for its people.

The Louisiana and Gulf Coast petrochemical industry was set up because of several reasons, Milton said — cheap feedstocks, cheap energy, good technology, skilled people and a growing market.

“Many of the fundamentals this facility and others in the area were built on have changed,” he said.

One example Milton cited is that technical graduates are pouring out of Asian universities, at a higher percentage than the United States and Europe combined.

“If we were to just sit still and let that happen, it is clear that the winners would be the producers in the Far East and Asia,” he said. “But we still have a lot of other great skills like great people and fantastic technology that we can apply better than anyone else.

“We have to move from the vantage point of having certain God-given advantages into being clever and smarter.”

Milton said his organization has a mindset that what it does today probably is not good enough.

“We constantly check, test and change organizational structure and tool sets and processes,” he said. “It’s just what I consider blocking and tackling on everything we are doing.”

Tied into its global competitiveness is the growth of the plant’s capacity, but not in the sense that gets the headlines, Milton said. Expanding what it already has, the plant’s growth in capacity over the years is equivalent to a good-sized chemical unit on a regular cycle.

“Just because we’re not building a new plant from the ground up doesn’t mean that the capital improvements that are ongoing aren’t having a similar impact on our ability to produce,” he said. “We are constantly working to be quicker, smarter, better, more energy efficient and more environmentally sound.”

Stepping up to stewardship

With all of ExxonMobil’s facilities in the area, the company’s operations make up about 15 percent of the local economy.

“We have a large footprint here, so as a result, we are heavily engaged in many levels of the community,” Milton said.

For example, ExxonMobil employees logged 40,000 volunteer hours last year and contributed $1.4 million to the Capital Area United Way.

Milton said he encourages all of the plant’s employees to get closely involved in community outreach, such as working with disadvantaged schools.

“We have a huge need for skilled workers over the next 10 years, and unless we can work with the educational community to really encourage math, science and technical study, the pipeline isn’t going to be as full as we’d like,” he said.

In addition to working with Baton Rouge Community College and supporting PTEC (process technology) programs, ExxonMobil is doing its part to encourage teacher training on how to make math and science fun by teaming up with the Phil Mickelson Foundation.

Through the Mickelson ExxonMobil Teachers Academy, 150 teachers in Louisiana underwent a weeklong training course this past summer.

“After one week, most of the teachers went back to their schools and shared what they learned with their peers, so there was a huge growth effect just from that one week,” Milton said. “We are working hard to try to repeat that in the future.”

A family affair

The Baton Rouge chemical plant — part of the sprawling complex featuring ExxonMobil’s 500,000-bpd refinery — will be part of the site’s centennial celebration in 2009. Plans are under way, including a search for families with continual employment, such as 50-year employees with three or four generations following in their footsteps (Milton’s assistant is an example of one such family).

“There really is a sense of family within the company and a certain family identity that you can see even in our retirees,” Milton said.

As for the family Milton goes home to each night — his wife Rachel and three daughters — they have settled in nicely in their Southern home, not a surprise for a family who is on the move.

“I really find it energizing every time we move, and my family and I enjoy all the new experiences,” he said.