Caltex climbs the safety ladder

The reason is simple. CPS has been aggressively tackling the safety issues that had made it statistically responsible for half of all incidents in the non-refining side of the business.

The good news about the improvements came from Paul Rogan, CPS Logistics and Compliance Manager, presenting at a two-day Operational Excellence (OE) forum, attended by around 30 people from across the company.

Drivers in the CPS reseller network work long hours, drive enormous distances in tough conditions and “their work is fraught with danger,” says Paul. It’s been necessary to make a radical shift to reduce incident rates, including turning the old notion of the customer comes first on its head.

It’s also meant investing time and money, changing mindsets and devising new processes that minimise risk.

Around 65,000 tanks on the CPS delivery map were inspected as part of a safety audit. Drivers were asked to name their top 10 dangerous sites - places where power lines hang low over a fuel tank, for example, and were told to refuse deliveries if a site was unsafe.

CPS management faced scepticism from drivers who’d always operated on the principle that the customer takes priority over working conditions. Turning that round took leadership from the top. Ian Ross, National Manager, Reseller, personally met all drivers, got them thinking about the ripple effect an accident would have on their families. He told them that now they’d be expected NOT to make deliveries to unsafe sites.

To reduce system errors, driver knowledge was employed in preparing detailed work instructions for forty high risk operational tasks defined by a task analysis group. “Drivers gave us feedback on the draft instructions,” says Paul. “This is standing in the shoes of the person doing the work because our drivers are our subject matter experts.”

Peter Wilkinson, Caltex’s Group Manager OE & Risk, told the forum that the steps taken to bring safety changes into the reseller group followed the classic principles of building organisational capability while taking into account the human factor. “It’s remembering the need to work on all elements that contribute to accidents, human behaviour, management systems and procedures as well as the hardware and equipment.”

Although the petrochemical industry has been slow to incorporate formal human factor methodology – the system elements which influence human reliability - its tenets are being observed throughout Caltex, observes Martin O’Neill, Manager Operational Excellence – Marketing, “it’s just not shared around.”

Guest speaker Nick Coleman from Human Engineering Australia told the forum that it’s time to get away from the concept of focusing solely on human behaviour as causing accidents, especially that of front line workers.

Accidents are the result of badly designed or implemented processes and equipment as well as human behaviour, he says.” It’s important to identify the latent system errors and make sure they’re designed out.”

Asked why the petrochemical industry is lagging industries such as aviation in taking human factors seriously Nick says it could be to do with the frontier-like mentality of the oil business and also to do with cost.

But, as he notes, there’s nothing like a disaster to make people want to prevent something similar happening again. “After the Waterfall train accident in NSW, Railcorp employed several human factors experts.”

Belinda Patterson, Environmental Protection Supervisor at Kurnell Refinery has proof of the benefits of empowering people in minimising risk. The refinery is highly visible in its local community and the nearest house is only four and a half metres from the boundary fence.

A spate of bad odour incidents in 2007 put the refinery at risk of regulators withdrawing its licence to operate in the local community. The problem Kurnell staff had was in defining and isolating the odours which were drawing complaints such as “stop the pong” and “can’t stand the smell.”

“We needed to know what the odours were and where they were coming from,” says Belinda. “Our best resource was our refinery noses and community noses – out of that our odour audit program was spawned.”

Community volunteers chosen to participate were given odour recognition training at an off-site laboratory and then exposed to a variety of refinery environments. Five odour audits were completed – results collated and problem areas exposed. The major culprit was a waste water treatment plant – and funds have been earmarked for a cover to be built over this by the end of 2009.

The outcome has been a success for Caltex. Complaint calls to the refinery about odours have fallen from 91 in 2007 to 44 this year. Best of all, says Belinda, residents have become aware of how hard Caltex works to minimise negative effects the refinery might have on the community.

The overall message from the forum is that although our Operational Excellence Management System journey is relatively young, there are examples of really good work being doing across the company. The challenge now is to maintain the momentum.

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