a CIANBRO company OCTOBER 2012 NEWSLETTER
BEST of the BEST By Brian Walker
On May 18, 2012, the Houston Business Roundtable presented Starcon with the prestigious “Best of the Best” award at the 25th Annual Safety Excellence Award Banquet in Galveston, Texas. Starcon was nominated by LyondellBasell due to outstanding safety performance at the Channelview, Texas site. This is not the first time Starcon has received an award at the HBR banquet. Over the last two years, Starcon has received a gold medal, but this was the first time the site received “Best of the Best” honors. The award was received by Site Manager Brian Walker, Safety Supervisor Anthony Falcon, and General Foreman Chris Padilla. The HBR Safety Excellence Award process is a six month long effort and involves hundreds of volunteers and participants. It begins with a request for nominations, and is unique in that contractors must be nominated by their clients, the users of their services. There are no self-nominations. Contractor work sites are nominated where the client had verifiable safety performance data for the past calendar year. Nominated contractors are put into award categories based on the type of work they do and in some cases by company size based on total U.S. work hours reported for the previous year. This makes for a fairer evaluation and allows more companies to be recognized. Each nominee submits their OSHA
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L to R: Chris Padilla, Anthony Falcon, Brian Walker required safety data regarding fatalities, lost workday cases, recordable injuries and illnesses, copies of their safety policies and procedures and documentation of their “best practices.” The initial evaluation is based on total U.S. data and the information submitted is evaluated and scored by a group of owner representatives and mentors to determine which contractors will be further evaluated in the field. Typically, three or four contractors in each of seven categories are identified for field auditing. Safety audits are conducted by teams of owner and contractor representatives at the contractor’s work site. Site management and field employees are interviewed to verify that the written safety policies and procedures have been implemented at the work site. This provides an opportunity for team members to see what others are doing to improve safety performance and to take good ideas back to their respective companies and work sites. The audit team leaders, with assistance from the mentors and team members, compile the audit scores and determine the level of achievement
for each contractor while identifying the Best in each Category. A unique feature of this award process is the requirement that the “Best in Category” contractors come to a “Best Practices” seminar and present their best practices that led to their excellent achievement. All other companies are encouraged to take these ideas back to their own companies to improve their own performance. Through the sharing of best practices, the entire industry improves its safety performance. There is an attitude that is prevalent among the owners and contractors that outstanding safety is not proprietary and must be shared with others. Many of the volunteers that participate in the award program are safety professionals with many years of experience and many have been involved in the HBR Safety Excellence Award process for several years. This is a win-win process for everyone involved.
THE SITE AUDITS CONSIST OF: • Review of Site Safety Programs • Emphasis on Employee Interviews • More than 100 Specific Safety Items Evaluated and Rated The Channelview site would like to thank the following team members for their help and support during the audit process: Mark Bortka, Craig Rion, Michael Caughey, Ta’Mara Foster, Mark Bay, Rachel Allen and Stephanie Nappier (LyondellBasell) STARCON / OCTOBER 2012