Jerry Wascom, vice president of operations excellence, safety, security, health and environment for ExxonMobil, describes the oil and gas and petrochemical industries in 2010 as having not been in a "good place."
"We were five years past the Texas City incident where so many lives were lost. Everybody was working really hard independently, inside their own companies, and we were still having a lot of events. As I recall, by the end of 2009, we had 10 open Chemical Safety Board investigations related to events in our industry."
This untenable record prompted Wascom and an accompanying group of safety professionals to spearhead the Advancing Process Safety Programs (APS), described by AFPM as "a groundbreaking collaboration between AFPM, API and our members, designed to continuously improve process safety throughout the industry via data collection and opportunities to share experiences and knowledge."
James Mahoney, former executive vice president of operations for Koch Industries, noted that within the organizing group, "There was a lot of desire to see what we could do to improve our performance. We came together and said, 'Hey, if we could prevent just one incident, think about the lives we could save,' and there was definitely a desire to make that happen."
Most refineries and plants were individually addressing how to better avoid incidents, injuries and fatalities within their own organizations, but the APS collaboration was something new.
"We knew there would be a lot of obstacles and challenges, but we had to have the courage and commitment to stay with it," Mahoney said.
Wascom stressed that this safety program would be "self-help" to drive optimal performance by stakeholders rather than being influenced by public relations, labor unions or regulating agencies.
"I had aspirations that once we established credibility and had success and a change of environment, it might open an opportunity to do more with it," Wascom said. "But first we had to develop that credibility. We had to show people that we meant it. We had to show people that we were really driving results. Otherwise it was going to just look like a smoke-and-mirrors campaign, and we had no interest in having that distraction."
Ten years later, the APS has exceeded Wascom's expectations.
Mike Bukowski, vice president of strategy and planning for Phillips 66, said the impact on the industry is a 60-percent reduction of process safety events. "This is very significant. If this were the only impact it would still be a tremendous success, but there have been [other] tangible and intangible benefits that go beyond the raw data."
A toolbox full of help
Bukowski pointed to the development of helpful tools that are also part of the APS.
"We have the infrastructure of the online portal for sharing best practices, and that's a foundation for continuous improvement," he said. "Second, the process safety assessment program is where experienced individuals from our business come out to the refineries and assess process practices. It's not an audit; it's an assessment."
The assessments are nonconfrontational, Bukowski explained.
"It's not with an outside agency," he said. "It's a collaborative process, and the success of the program has been tremendous."
The safety program's regional networks, Bukowski said, were also started by safety professionals, "but eventually we were able to expand and put folks in there from operations and site management. We can get to those individuals and share the best practices with them that are working for a lot of different sites within our industry."
Fritz Kin, director of safety, security, emergency response and process safety management for Marathon Petroleum Corp., said he considers the regional network concept to be "wildly successful."
Wascom said the APS's success illustrates the power of collaboration.
"When people started getting together in person, talking and understanding how others can help, it was one of the most significant components that pulled it all together," he concluded.
