Safety Awards
Excellence Award
Dale Bradford (team representative)
Eliminating High Risk Activities in Drilling Operations
Petroleum, Worldwide Drilling Team, Houston, US
Dale and his colleagues at the Worldwide Drilling Team are leading a process to eliminate high risk activities in drilling operations. Through a concerted effort to work as a team with GlobalSantaFe (GSF), our drilling contractor in the region, and their ultra-deepwater drillship, the C R Luigs, the team is realising its aim to achieve Zero Harm to people and the environment, and to outperform the industry in drilling efficiency.
The process commenced with a study to determine the levels of exposures, to identify where the most significant risks lay, and what would be needed to eliminate those risks from the ship. As a result a number of initiatives were put in place to address the safety challenges found in lifting operations and dropped objects, working at height, and confined space entry.
The results have been outstanding. Our aim to achieve 'best in class' operational capabilities with outstanding safety performance has been realised, as reflected in the 2005 Safety Award for Excellence received from the Minerals Management Service (MMS) of the US Department of the Interior that was presented to GSF. The MMS is the primary regulator of the industry and performs periodic, unannounced inspections of all offshore facilities.
Highly Commended Awards
Muhammad Aftab Khan (team representative)
Contractors Safety Awareness Program
Petroleum, Pakistan Asset, Islamabad, Pakistan
As the Pakistani Asset Team utilises many contractors, there is a need to increase HSEC awareness and competency and to promote and instil the BHP Billiton HSEC culture. Muhammad and the Pakistan Asset Team have developed a Contractors Safety Awareness Program to reinforce our efforts to achieve Zero Harm in our contractor activities, an area vulnerable to HSEC-related incidents as HSEC management is a relatively new concept for most Pakistani companies.
The program consists of an HSEC starter pack and training program. The pack, which was developed to dovetail into the existing management of contractors' systems, comprises a range of HSEC-related written and visual communication tools available in both English and Urdu, the Pakistan national language. Rather than simply handing over the pack to the contractor, at the contract signing stage a formal briefing session is undertaken by the HSEC and contracts departments. At the completion of this orientation, the pack is handed over and the contractor's senior management signs an agreement of the conditions and a commitment to roll out the information within their own organisations.
The initiative has realised a number of benefits, including better working relationships with our contractors and enhanced safety performance.
Edan Stolberg (team representative)
Dozer Training Package
Carbon Steel Materials, BHP Billiton Mitsibishi Alliance, Australia
Edan and his team have developed a dozer-training package that is so realistic and extensive that it promotes full understanding and eliminates the need to learn by trial and error.
Within BHP Billiton operating dozers on stockpiles with bottom feeders is widely recognised as one of the highest risk activities. When Goonyella Riverside experienced two serious incidents, investigations revealed a general lack of understanding by operators of the level of risks involved in using a dozer on a stockpile, and that inadequate technique resulting from insufficient training was compounding the problem.
However when research was conducted on the subject, little which was informative was found and, in some cases, examples were found of material that was grossly incorrect and potentially encouraged high-risk activities. In response, Edan and the team at Goonyella Riverside decided to consolidate their learnings and present them in a way that could be used in a practical sense.
Of paramount importance was ensuring the package covered as many likely scenarios as possible, as a trainer cannot sit in a dozer with an operator. The resulting package is a comprehensive set of clear work instructions encompassing photos, videos, slideshows and a DVD. Trainees and trainers alike are now more confident having gone through the training that they have been exposed to all the risks and are therefore more aware of, and prepared for, the risks.
John Christowitz (team representative)
Reducing Road Transport Risk
Aluminium, Mozal, Mozambique
In early 2005, Mozal terminated a raw materials transport agreement due to unacceptable safety performance by the supplier and entered into a long-term agreement with a specialist logistics company that has an excellent record of safety performance. John and his team have been responsible for managing the change-over and ensuring that safety performance not only improved but became sustainable.
Our Mozal aluminium operation is located approximately 17 kilometres west of Maputo, the capital of Mozambique. Its vehicle fleet consists of 17 truck haulers and trailers that together complete an average of 148,000 kilometres per month, much of which is on public roads through densely populated suburban areas. Drivers contend with numerous risks, many of which are beyond their direct control and include pedestrians, animals, high traffic densities, poorly maintained road infrastructure and the unsafe driving habits of many road users.
As a result of numerous road safety initiatives and programs, including driver fatigue management, zero alcohol and drug tolerance, increased vehicle payloads, random speed checks, noise reduction and behavioural safety observations, implemented in partnership with the new supplier, the fleet completed over 800,000 incident-free kilometres in the six-month period from 1 September 2005 to 28 February 2006.
Merit Awards
Ross Truelson (team representative)
BMA Haul Road Watering Project
Carbon Steel Materials, BHP Billiton Mitsubishi Alliance, Peak Downs Mine, Australia
Over the past years BMA has experienced a number of safety incidents associated with over-watering of surface mine haul roads. Ross and the BMA Haul Road Watering Project team determined the best approach to reducing these safety incidents was to combine a fit-for-purpose delivery system on water trucks with improved operator training that focused on haul road watering practices.
In seeking to address an immediate safety issue, there was no time available to spend on developing new technology. Instead the team modified existing technology to deliver a simple yet reliable water delivery system able to be retrofitted to Peak Downs water trucks.
Concurrently, a review of existing road watering training revealed it to be inadequate: existing training manuals were too long, and focused on water truck operations. The team developed new training documentation that was simpler and more easily understood, and that focused on haul road watering practices.
The result is a water truck with all the features required to safely and effectively control haul road dust levels, operated by personnel who can recognise the appropriate level of water required and know how to control the water delivery system to deliver that level of water.
A secondary benefit is that less water is now required for haul road watering, reducing the demand for this increasingly scarce resources without compromising the quality of dust suppression.
Nicole Sabourin (team representative)
Zero Incident Process
Diamonds and Specialty Products, EKATI Diamond Mine, Canada
Nicole and her colleagues have introduced the Zero Incident Process – or ZIP – a psychologically based safety process designed specifically to empower individuals to achieve the goal of staying safe.
ZIP does this by providing insight into how the brain works, thinking, attitudes and values. It gives a person the tools to take control of their thinking and feeling, and thus the results obtained, particularly around safety outcomes. It moves a step beyond behaviour-based safety, which is founded only on behaviourism, to the underlying psychological cause of behaviour – our thinking.
ZIP beings with a survey that looks at the current safety culture of the organisation, including the attitude held by employees and management around safety. Training is then conducted with sessions customised for business leaders and front-line workers.
The impact of ZIP has been a catalyst for step change in safety. In particular, the ZIP training has subtly exposed and separated those who are true believers in safety from those who may be on the fringe and believe their safety is the responsibility of someone other than themselves.
John Mitchell (team representative)
Six Sigma Visibility Project
Energy Coal, Mt Arthur Coal, Hunter Valley, Australia
The Six Sigma Visibility Project, lead by John, was a joint activity between our Mount Arthur Coal operation and the diversified technology company 3M to increase the visibility of equipment, vehicles and signs at the mine through a cooperative business improvement project.
Both companies provided project teams to look into ways of improving the visibility of equipment and vehicles on site after it was found that, in the majority of near-miss incidents involving equipment and vehicles, people reported not seeing the other vehicle.
A survey of truck drivers involved in incidents revealed a number of concerns about the visibility of vehicles and signs on site. As a result, a trial involving a variety of different materials for road and vehicle markings was conducted. At the conclusion of the trial, the drivers rated visibility as improving from 74 per cent to 93 per cent. The new signage and vehicle markings have been adopted as the site standard and it is expected that the risk of vehicle collisions will be greatly reduced.
Mount Arthur Coal and 3M have since received numerous enquiries about the project from BHP Billiton sites and other companies and many have shown an interest in applying similar standards for the visibility of equipment, vehicles and signs.
Anthony Peterson (team representative) (team representative)
HSEC Contacts Process
Carbon Steel Materials, BHP Billiton Mitsubishi Alliance, Goonyella Riverside Mine, Australia
Goonyella Riverside Mine, for a considerable time, has utilised the Dupont system of Job Observations to assist in the identification and control of behavioural risk. This system had a major role in dramatically improving HSEC performance; however, it was limited in its ability to drive contact discussions around significant risks on site. The system also required large numbers of resources to administer and resulting reporting abilities were limited.
Anthony and the HSEC Contacts Process team have led the development and maintenance of HSEC contact system which was easy to use, required minimal resources to administer, encouraged discussions around significant risks on site and provided real time reporting on site risk thresholds. A working group consisting of superintendents and departmental safety coordinators assisted in the refining of the process.
The project is now fully implemented on site, proactively illustrating areas of high risk that may required intervention to further reduce risks to ‘zero harm’ levels. All personnel are engaged in the process to that point that safe behaviours are becoming embedded in everyday behaviour. The project has also assisted in fostering communication between all levels of the organisation.
Ramón Parrguez (team representative)
Behaviour Based Competence Model
Base Metals, Escondida, Second Region, Chile
The Behaviour-based Competence Model implemented by Ramón and his colleagues is improving safety performance by making explicit the knowledge, skills and personal attributes necessary for high performance in specific jobs and roles.
Training is delivered online via a modular system that was developed using in-house expertise.
Designed to provide a vision and direction for the kinds of performance necessary to successfully implement business strategy, the system indicates the behaviour-based performance standards against which people and their business units can be aligned and measured by answering such questions as: What is the performance standard that will allow me to fulfill my goals? What do I need to do to meet performance standard? What obstacles must I overcome or ignore? How do I know if I have achieved the required performance standards? Importantly the system helps in relacing such responses as ‘Don’t Know, Can’t or Don’t want to’ that are seen as inhibitors to strong performance.
Taking into account that some 90 per cent of incidents happen because of workers’ behaviour, it is expected that once the project is fully implemented, incident rates will decrease.
Johan Badenhurst (team representative)
Measuring Contractor Performance
Energy Coal, Ingwe, Middelburg Mine, South Africa
Johan and his colleagues have developed service level agreements to measure contractors' performance. In particular, the agreements are designed to ensure that all contractors are aware of their contribution to the HSEC performance on site, and facilitate completion of projects and sharing of learnings.
Discussions with contractors had revealed some shortcomings in the approach to contractor management, including an inability to track performance and no coordinated approach to managing and mentoring contractors in respect of HSEC. This led to the development of a standardized system that measures contractors' performance on a monthly basis against a series of key performance indicators.
Since the introduction of the system, there has been an improvement in the safety performance of the contractors.
