Joe Jackson sometimes kicks off turnaround safety training sessions by asking employees and contractors a rather alarming question. “Who came to work today to be hurt?,” he’ll ask, immediately seizing his audience’s attention. “Statistically speaking, for this turnaround, for this number of man-hours, two people are going to be hurt. I’ve got a hammer right here, so I need two volunteers to come on up. We’ll get it over with right now so we don’t have to worry about it anymore.”
As LyondellBasell Houston Refinery LP’s turnaround project manager, Jackson realizes the life-and-death importance of his message.
“Nobody wants to get hurt. Nobody wants to even think about getting hurt. That’s not even in their minds, and that’s the big challenge,” Jackson said, addressing delegates to the Effective STO Summit held recently in Houston.
“When dealing with safety, you have to keep the message fresh all the time. You’ve got to change it up. You’ve got to keep it current and real. You’ve got to make it new and interesting,” he continued. “I consider myself a Johnny Appleseed. Every day my goal is to plant a seed in each person, so over time, eventually that message will kick in.”
Jackson’s years in the turnaround and safety sector have taught him almost all incidents are preventable.
“In my experience, there are very few acts of God that prompt a turnaround,” Jackson said. “Nearly every event, every first-aid, every reportable, every near-miss is a preventable activity. There are acts of God that crop up occasionally, like tornadoes, but for the most part, events are almost always self-inflicted.”
Citing “normalization of deviation,” a term used by psychologists explaining behavior, Jackson said safety is “a continual fight against human nature.”
“Most of the time, we’re in a nonconscious, autopilot-based mode of behavior,” he said. “Normalization of deviation means when a human being performs a task the same way twice, that is forever how he is going to do that task. That’s how behavior is developed. It doesn’t matter if it’s the right way or the wrong way, or if there are improvements along the way. It’s our challenge to help people understand where the opportunities for improvement are.”
Making the invisible visible
GoalZERO is the “umbrella name” for LyondellBasell’s highly successful safety focus program. It is based on a companywide, yet personal, commitment by which all parties hold themselves responsible not only for their own safety and well-being but for the safety of everyone else.
“Everyone is valued not only for what they do but also for who they are,” Jackson explained. “GoalZERO is not only numbers and statistics but also relationships and people. We are one team engaged in the safety process because we care about each other.”
The GoalZERO approach to safety outlines specific “rules of performance” its workers and contractors are expected to follow.
Working safely is “a first and forever expectation,” Jackson said. “When striving for safety, is (compliance by) 100 percent of the people 100 percent of the time too much to ask? From our perspective, the answer is ‘no.’ Not only is that not too much to ask, that’s the expectation.”
Workers are also expected to proactively intervene in actions they believe are unsafe.
“We’ve evolved to the point everyone has the right to stop work if they deem it to be unsafe or of concern to them,” Jackson said. “A person doing something at-risk is not a confrontation to avoid but an opportunity to share concern, learn and build relationships.”
Taking time to complete tasks correctly with attention to proper housekeeping is also a standard GoalZERO requirement, as is wearing proper PPE and following approved procedures.
Using equipment correctly, and never misusing a dedicated system or bypassing safety devices, promotes the production of products and services that meet or exceed customer expectations, Jackson said.
“Make sure you have the proper skills and knowledge to do your job,” he added. “We seek out opportunities for coaching and welcome being coached without threat, intimidation or taking offense.”
Further, if a situation is not understood, workers are expected to move to a safe condition and get help. GoalZERO also requires workers to “take care when making changes” to verify safety is not compromised.
Additionally, incidents or injuries must be reported promptly, should they occur.
“When something goes wrong, we respond positively as one team to learn, share and improve,” Jackson said.
Regardless of how low their recordables might be, turnaround teams must never “rest on their laurels,” Jackson warned. “It’s always a going-back-to-zero and a starting over process.”
Before LyondellBasell embarks on a turnaround, all involved personnel, including contractors, must make a commitment to safety.
“Our work is never so urgent or important we cannot take time to do it safely,” Jackson said. “Philosophically, what’s driving this is no person should be harmed in the execution of his or her work.”
Safety must be considered in all aspects of a job, not only from concept to start-up but also through operating and maintaining.
“At the very beginning of jobs, people are focused,” Jackson observed. “They talk about pre-task analysis and all the things that could go wrong. But as they progress through their day, their minds turn off to those kinds of things.”
However simplistic, a picture truly is worth a thousand words, Jackson said, in identifying hazards that might be overlooked.
“Understanding a hazard isn’t the same as recognizing a hazard,” Jackson explained. “In all the safety meetings I’ve helped facilitate, I can give workers a scenario, and they can tell me what the potential hazard is. Listing it is one thing, but mentally applying it while you’re doing the work is something completely different. And that’s how we end up with an incident.”
Utilizing before-and-after PowerPoint presentations or even photos on poster boards is effective in illustrating hazards.
“Show a picture of the hazard,” Jackson said. “Take the invisible and make it visible. You’ve got to grab people in terms of what the expectations look like so as you continue to talk about it, it becomes more obvious and more apparent.”
Maintaining the ‘safety continuum’
Regarding anticipating challenges to safety, Jackson recommends looking for leading indicators as opposed to lagging indicators.
“I’ll call a refinery and say, ‘Guess what? We’re about to have a recordable,’” he said. “They’ll say, ‘What do you mean?’ I’ll say, ‘Well, we’ve had seven first-aids, and our average is six to eight before we have a recordable.’”
The last time he did that, Jackson said, the next day the facility had a recordable.
“You’ve got leading indicators out there,” he said. “There’s time between recordables you can look at. That should be stimulating discussion and focus around prevention, making sure everybody’s refreshed and their minds are in the game.”
The reality, Jackson said, is people seldom heed the safety message until they have their own event or someone close to them is involved in a significant event.
“That is the only time people get engaged,” he said. “We all say safety is the most important thing — it is No. 1 — but a lot of times some of the things that tend to be done don’t reflect that actual commitment. It seems strange, but people seldom internalize the message and apply it to themselves.”
Moving people along “the safety continuum,” Jackson said, sometimes presents unique challenges. When coaching turnaround teams in how to maintain the highest level of safety, some individuals are hesitant to even discuss the possibility of injury or worse.
“When I start talking about recordable events, people will say, ‘Oh no, don’t jinx us!’,” Jackson said. “I’m not a superstitious person. I’d rather have people informed and engaged, and their mental processes percolating all the time. Hopefully when they’re at that split second when they’re making a decision to do something, they’ll make the right decision. And they will if they’re engaged in what they’re doing.”
Incident avoidance and generally being proactive instead of reactive, Jackson said, is the key in protecting people and productivity. “What happens after an incident? We waste time and money,” he observed. “It’s better to talk about these things, to establish expectations. That’s more powerful.”
Ultimately, Jackson said, it’s up to each individual to determine what his safety legacy will be.
“We work safely with each other because it is the right thing to do,” Jackson concluded. “We choose to be safe because our coworkers, families and loved ones are counting on us.
“Is your motivation to go home safely every night, to be back home with the person or persons your day was for? Shouldn’t that be the real motivation? It is mine.”
For more information, visit www.LyondellBasell.com.