When the cost of error can be measured in lives, property and reputation, safety isn’t just a protocol — it’s a culture.
Speakers from Lubrizol and SABIC shared insights during the 2025 ACC Responsible Care® and Sustainability Conference and Expo in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Mike McGrew, an engineering technician at SABIC’s Mount Vernon, Indiana site, brought firsthand knowledge to the topic. With family members working in the same facility, McGrew made it clear that safety is more than a professional concern — it’s personal.
Lubrizol, SABIC: When lives are on the line, safety goes beyond the manual
Colleen Frabotta with Lubrizol explains the company’s Human Performance Framework initiative.
McGrew recounted a pivotal story from his colleague Tim Stevens that catalyzed SABIC’s shift toward experiential learning. Stevens recreated a real-life "line of fire" scenario where a bull plug under pressure unexpectedly shot out — an event he had personally experienced early in his career. By recreating this incident in a controlled setting using simple props, trainees were allowed to feel the pressure and consequences safely.
"Once those folks were armed with that experience, they didn’t do it again. One, they wore their PPE right. And two, they were ready for it. They anticipated it," McGrew said.
This hands-on approach wasn’t limited to a single prop. SABIC built an entire safety center with training modules designed around their most frequent and severe incident types — slips, trips and falls; line of fire; and energy isolation. Using mock-up equipment and real pressure simulations, the company trained over 600 employees to date.
McGrew’s team didn’t build out training environments — they repurposed old equipment from around the site, working closely with maintenance technicians who brought tradesman-level expertise to create authentic learning tools. According to McGrew, this collaboration had a morale-boosting ripple effect.
"Not to mention the excitement in the air — the team felt like, ‘Hey, you know, this is a win,’" he said. "Our emergency responders were getting good training. It was just a great moment for our site."
Colleen Frabotta, human performance director with Lubrizol, emphasized that human performance is fundamentally about protecting workers by minimizing human error. She described it as a systematic, risk-based approach that should become part of everyday operations — not just another safety initiative.
"We’re all fallible. Even our best people can make the worst mistakes because they’re the ones taking the shots," she said. Frabotta stressed the importance of listening to your instincts, noting that if something feels off, it probably is. She also highlighted how individual behavior is shaped by organizational values and processes — "What’s important to my boss can become important to me."
"Understanding why mistakes happen, and applying lessons learned… that’s where prevention really starts to occur," she added.
McGrew also highlighted a shift in the demographic of plant operators. With experienced workers retiring, many new hires are entering the field with little to no industrial background.
"They may not know what a rotary valve is. They don’t know what a library is. They don’t know what a flange is or a low point bleed," he said.
McGrew stressed the importance of building these foundational skills safely through simulation rather than trial by fire. "We can’t afford for people to learn from incidents out in real time," he said. "So, we wanted to experience that, learn from incidents and control the environment."
As both McGrew and Frabotta made clear, reducing incidents isn’t just about rules and checklists. It’s about crafting opportunities to learn before mistakes happen — through storytelling, muscle memory and respect for the process.
