Chevron Phillips Chemical Co. LP closed out last year with zero Tier 1 process safety events for the first time in the company's history, achieving its best-ever Tier 1 and 2 combined process safety event rate, with zero recordable injuries associated with process safety events. In a recent podcast presented by the Texas Chemical Council, Senior Vice President of Manufacturing Bryan Canfield shared how Chevron Phillips Chemical Co. has been able to achieve such a stellar process safety record. Canfield provided tips for other companies looking to boost their own performance in that area.
"By placing greater attention on safe operating decisions, over time, we have made strides in asset reliability, and reliable operations reduce unplanned outages and prevent lost opportunities," Canfield said. "The old dilemma of choosing between production and safety is a false choice. By focusing on safe and reliable operations, our employees go home safely every day."
Canfield explained his company’s tagline, “Performance by Design, Caring by Choice™.” It has guided its leadership in its journey toward impeccable process safety.
"We demonstrate our 'Caring by Choice' approach by upholding the safety of our employees, contractors, customers and communities as a core value," he said. "This caring approach incentivizes people to deliver on the 'Performance by Design' aspect of our culture. That is how we elevate our ability to achieve strong results without losing sight of the human element."
As a result, this formula helps sustain the level of performance Chevron Phillips Chemical Co. needs to compete in any environment. This caring culture is even more critical during a global pandemic, as the company works to maintain its focus on safe, reliable operations and customer service. In the spirit of continuous improvement in process safety, its recent efforts have focused on evaluating Tier 3 process safety events and high-potential consequence events, even if they did not lead to an injury or serious incident. By focusing on Tier 3 events, the company proactively looks at smaller releases, minor process excursions and inspections outside of limits. These actions help leadership address the smaller issues before they can become potentially larger events.
"Tier 3 metrics could be considered weak safety signals, but by tracking and reporting them monthly at the executive level of the organization, we effectively increase the strength of these signals," Canfield said. "Emphasis on these indicators does not just provide larger datasets to analyze; it also identifies root causes to help us learn about and prevent future events.
"When it comes to data analysis, we employ a process safety dashboard, which our board of directors reviews regularly - something that speaks to the extremely high visibility this data has within company leadership. This dashboard helps drive performance and behaviors throughout plant management."
To that end, Chevron Phillips Chemical Co. has efforts underway to make process hazard analyses more consistent with standard scenario development and analytics. Beyond formal reviews and assessments, the company spends significant time infusing its culture with the right kind of values and behaviors it expects from its workforce. In that respect, the company's "journey to zero" is the cornerstone of its operational excellence strategy.
"For large projects and turnarounds, we go one step further and host workshops with strategic contractor representatives," Canfield said. "We also track contractor incidents through the same level of investigation and reporting as employee incidents. Ultimately, what all of these initiatives and trainings have created is a framework in which safety remains a core value for us and results in reliable operations."
