ExxonMobil STAR
It’s fair to say, in addition to its hundreds of synthetic lubricant and grease products, ExxonMobil Beaumont Lube Plant also manufactures a culture of safety.
In fact, all of its facilities in Beaumont, Texas, are OSHA Voluntary Protection Program (VPP) STAR work sites, considered OSHA’s highest recognition for workforce involvement and outstanding safety performance. It took a team of dedicated employees to achieve these standards, and their efforts haven’t gone unnoticed.
“We established a safety, health and environmental committee comprised of a person from each crew, a maintenance technician, an electrical technician, a variety of people from the lab and managers,” said Art Ruggles, ExxonMobil Beaumont Lube Plant maintenance technician.
The committee submitted its first application for OSHA VPP STAR certification in 1998. Since then the plant has been recognized with numerous certifications and recertifications, including OSHA’s coveted VPP “Star Among Stars” designation. One milestone on the road to this exemplary safety record is paying acute attention to the myriad things that could go wrong in the course of a day’s work.
“We try to mitigate hazards and draw attention to them through our job safety analyses and work instructions so we make sure we know what our potential risks are ahead of time,” said Leah Ritter, a shift supervisor at ExxonMobil’s Beaumont Lube Plant.
The facility’s 175 workers are trained to develop a sensitive eye to identify and thereby avoid hazards associated with everything from forklifts to furnaces, aboveground and excavation work, to chemical storage and handling.
Ritter said all employees are encouraged to conduct a “self-performance safety assessment” every day before beginning their duties.
“Sometimes we only think about the things we know can happen, but we ask them to think, ‘What is the worst thing that could happen today?’,” Ritter continued, addressing delegates at the Region VI Voluntary Protection Programs’ 2015 Annual Safety and Health Conference, held recently in Corpus Christi, Texas.
The result of this level of safety awareness, Ritter said, speaks for itself.
“As you consider our safety performance, our total recordable incident rate has decreased over the past 20 years,” she said.
Another step on the road to receiving VPP certification, said ExxonMobil A Operator and safety committee mentor Sean LeRoy, is employee involvement, including monthly meetings that routinely last as long as 12 hours.
“Engineering and maintenance personnel come in and brief us on projects,” he explained. “Twelve hours is a long time, but usually we do not have enough time to complete everything.”
These extensive monthly meetings are by no means the only time safety concerns are addressed at the plant, LeRoy added. At the beginning of each shift, or set, crews engage in “tool box” meetings.
“We discuss daily questions and have safety discussions,” LeRoy continued. “Somebody may have had a close call or near-loss, and we always try to bring that up in that meeting so it doesn’t happen again.
“The shift supervisor conducts the meeting, but we also encourage our employees to stand up, if they want to, and bring something to the table by contributing to the meeting.”
In addition to a number of OSHA self-evaluations, assessments and audits, LeRoy said the facilities have strategically placed suggestion and safety concerns boxes.
“And all of our managers have an open-door policy,” LeRoy added. “If someone has a problem in their area, or just in general, you just go to the door, knock on it and ask to talk to the manager.
“We believe by actively caring, no one gets hurt.”
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