It was the mid-90’s and Major Oil and Chemical companies were striving to improve their capital project efficiency. New business based project work processes were under development that were based on stage gated work phases that allowed for thoughtful and timely business and economic decisions. It was at this time as well that safety was getting attention as part of these work processes. Construction work safety performance was relatively poor in the early 90’s and it was apparent that safety needed to be a very essential element in these new policies and procedures for ethical and business reasons.

In the 1990’s I was working as a Project Manager for Amoco Corporation in their Worldwide Engineering and Construction office in Clear Lake, near Houston. A team was set up to develop the new business project work process that would be implemented across all business units. The name of this set of new project execution rules was called the Amoco Common Process or ACP. Although the title was not too exciting, the program was. The “Process” had a very detailed Front End Loading Process with three stages, each stage with prescribed deliverables and Value practices that ensured that the required project definition was completed at each stage for a thoughtful business decision to move forward. The Process included all aspects of Project Execution: engineering, procurement, construction, commissioning, and safety.

My project was a restart of a de-commissioned paraxylene facility at the Amoco Decatur Chemical plant. The scope was to rebuild and replace the equipment in both the hot and cold ends of the unit, there were a few active process areas in the unit that had to focused on for safe project execution. The PX-1 Restart project was to be one of three ACP “pilot” projects. All aspects the ACP were followed rigorously and that included a new focus on behavior based safety. The project would be actively pursuing “leading” safety indicator behaviors and not just focus on the “lagging” indicators that was used in the past. What are leading and lagging indicators for safety?

Lagging:

➤ Recordable Incidence Rate
➤ Lost Time Rate
➤ Near Miss reporting
➤ Safety Investigation

Leading:

➤ Pre-Job Safety Planning (JSA) for each task
➤ Multi-functional Safety Walkthrough with all team members and contractors
➤ Safety Observations, both good and bad
➤ Overall project safety execution plan before construction mobilization
➤ Scoring of the quality of JSAs and Safety Observations
➤ Trending of Safety Observations to identify trends before an accident happens and starting a campaign to address any issues.

The Decatur PX-1 Restart project was to focus on the leading indicator practices to ensure exceptional safety performance. Our EPC contractor was totally onboard, and construction started at the end of 1995.

Construction on this project was challenging. Some of the lines and equipment in the “hot end” were still in operation, the “cold end” was totally shutdown. A lot of the old equipment like centrifuges, pumps, and exchangers had to be replaced in kind. Cryogenic insulation on vessels and piping had to be replaced. The control room was demoed, and a new control room was built offsite. And there was a 30-day unit shutdown in the “hot end” to perform our new equipment and piping installations. Job Safety Analyses were performed for every task every day and they were routinely audited. Joint safety walkthroughs with construction craft and management were routinely held. And safety observations were tracked and analyzed for potential safety trends. In short, this job was close to impeccable when it came down to safety performance and employee engagement. By Project completion we worked over 1.5 million workhours without an OSHA recordable injury. This was a quite a feat in 1997. It was time for a project wide safety celebration to mark this remarkable achievement!

It was decided to hold the 1.5M safety celebration outdoors inside the plant in a parking lot. A catering company was brought in to grill BBQ on-site. Hundreds of project team members were in attendance from Amoco and all the other contractors. I was running late to the luncheon due to a call that was running over at the construction trailer. One of my construction managers came into my office in a rush and told me to come quick someone just blew themselves up at the celebration! I ran over to the celebration and found out the cook tried to light the grill with the lid down and caused a small gas explosion. This explosion burned his hands and forearms very badly. First aid personnel attended to him, and he was taken away by ambulance. Needless to say, this was a very bad look for a project that was ready to celebrate a perfect safety record. People were shocked and the luncheon was called off. Now I had to make the call to my management that I had a guy blow him self up at our safety celebration. I was sure this was my last day at Amoco.

Luckily, my management was more understanding than I thought. They just wanted to make sure that we support the injured chef as much as we could. But this event brought a great awakening:

Everyone involved had an ah-ha moment: Safety is not just for the job site!

We did everything correct when we were in the field but let our guard down when we were offsite and planning on enjoying some time celebrating. If we would have continued to follow our policies and procedures when it came to the safety luncheon this injury could have been minimized or never even happen.

➤ A Job Safety Analysis would have been performed on the grilling procedure. Most likely some form of PPE would have been required like grilling gloves that protect the forearm. We probably would have caught and mitigated the poor “light the grill with the lid down” decision.

➤ With proper safety execution planning we might have even decided that grilling onsite was a bad idea and should be done offsite in a safer environment.

This incident reminded all of us that safety is a 24/7 activity, at work or at home. After the incident it seemed so obvious, but it wasn’t even a thought before. Times have changed for the better!

The chef was released from the hospital and fully recovered. We re-scheduled the safety celebration, and everyone had a good time. The PX-1 unit started up and the project was deemed a success.

A few months later, at another project’s safety celebration, a worker cut himself with a pocket knife that was given out as a safety gift. But that is a lesson for another time…….