Developed as an online toolbox resource for its members, AFPM's Walk the Line program is an operations-driven, practice-sharing program that taps into the experiences of front-line workers to help reduce process safety events and make sites safer.
Discussing Walk the Line and how it has impacted his company's culture, Michael McKee, vice president of refining operations for PBF Energy, noted that "culture" is "one of those strange words we use in the refinery that sounds very warm and fuzzy."
The reality is that the cultural standard is "very difficult" to attain, McKee said during a session at the 2021 AFPM Annual Meeting.
"We want to execute every test correctly 100 percent of the time, regardless of that task's degree of difficulty," he said. "It's human nature to view routine, repeated tasks as simple. That's something we do all the time. A classic example is walking. But walking is working, and walking is one of our biggest sources of injuries at refineries. Getting people to recognize that these tasks have to be done a certain way with a certain structure, whether it's routine or not, was one of the biggest cultural changes we had to put in place."
Another challenge, McKee said, was "to get people to utilize the advantage of teamwork across all tasks, whether they're routine or not."
Michael VanDerSnick, senior vice president of Americas manufacturing for LyondellBasell, said he believes that from a cultural perspective, getting people to be comfortable asking for help is a common challenge throughout the industry.
"Along with that is getting permission to take longer to do a job when the permission needs to come exclusively from a front-line supervisor," VanDerSnick said. "Sometimes, experience will tell an operator that 'I ought to be able to do this job quicker, so why should I ask for help?' I think that's the challenge. It's not a sign of weakness to ask for help and get a second set of eyes."
To drive that point, he said senior operators must become actively involved. "We need the senior operators to ask the less-experienced operators to give them that second set of eyes, and we need the front-line supervisors to praise and recognize those behaviors. That's what it's going to take, because they'll otherwise revert back to their old thought process of 'My job is to get the task done and I don't need help.'"
Walk the Line provides the structure, framework and expectation to push back against that old mindset, VanDerSnick concluded.
The contagion of positive culture
Tim Watson, corporate environment, health and safety vice president for Americas Styrenics, said he believes the Walk the Line program "really aligns with our continuous improvement cycle, which is to 'prepare, perform, measure and improve.' I think that's really the essence of what we're discussing with Walk the Line."
Watson added that Walk the Line has helped create what he calls "a contagion of positive culture."
"People like to win. They like to be heard, and they appreciate clear expectations and the reinforcement of targeted behaviors, accountability and leadership engagement," Watson said. "It makes for a potent cocktail that allows people to thrive in a positive culture. I think the efforts that have come about as a result of the adoption of Walk the Line have really created this effect."
Offering evidence of that "potent cocktail's" influence, Watson shared that the process safety performance at Americas Styrenics has been the best in the company's history over the past three years.
"That reinforces the work being done," he said.
Lawrence Moreaux, vice president and site manager for LyondellBasell, observed that striving for continual improvement is a goal that unites all of AFPM's members.
Moreaux praised Walk the Line. "I think of it not just as checklists or assessments, but as a tool to make workers' jobs easier, and make information more accessible," he said. "It's definitely helpful."
