Two fatalities in just one year — related to the same piece of
equipment — led to important improvements in worker protection.
Arguably, these did not go far enough, but one solution may help
provide an extra boost of safety.
Mining, as anyone who works within it knows only too well, can be a
dangerous industry. It is not just underground and at the coal face
where serious (and even fatal) accidents can occur. There is one piece
of equipment in particular that has led to serious accidents: the
inclined conveyor. But a solution from Renold Couplings promises to
alleviate the risk, and Rio Tinto is just one company that has taken
advantage of the innovation to protect its workers.
The mining industry would find it hard to function without the inclined
conveyor to transport coal. However, in the event of a loss of power,
their design means that they can run backwards, out of control, if in a
loaded condition. For that reason, for many years, these systems have
been fitted with backstop sprag clutches. These work by allowing a shaft
to rotate in one direction as the sprags slip. But if the shaft tries
to turn the other way — as it will do if the conveyor begins to run
backwards — the sprags immediately stand up and lock.
These same safety components are also fitted to theme park rides to
prevent cars from running downhill in the event of a power failure.
Although this effectively solves the problem it was designed to, another
associated problem can also occur, for which it is not only no help
but is also actually the direct cause.
If a blockage occurs between the lower belt and the return end shaft,
the conveyor will stall. The backstop sprag clutch then comes into
operation to prevent the belt from running backwards — but as a result,
tension builds in the upper belt, because the slack in the lower belt
can’t feed back through the drive.
The natural reaction of the operator is to remove whatever is causing
the obstruction to get the conveyor back in operation as quickly as
possible. But if the tension in the upper belt isn’t released first, the
sudden release that occurs when the blockage is removed will cause it
to pull the lower belt rapidly around the return roller with huge
force. This force can be so powerful that it has been known to cause
the load on the top belt to explode in all directions, and has even
pulled the worker removing the blockage into the conveyor.
One answer, developed by Renold, is the tension release and torque
limiting safety holdback sprag clutch, which has been designed to enable
the extreme tension in the upper belt to be released in a controlled
way through controlled friction slippage of the sprag clutch element of
the backstop.
With the tension released in this controlled manner, maintenance work
can be carried out to remove the blockage and get the conveyor up and
running again, quickly and safely.
This is an edited article provided by Renold Couplings. For more information, visit www.renold.com.
In any business venture, we get results through careful planning of
activities and through measuring not only the results but the activities
that the people undertake to get those results. The creation of safety
excellence is accomplished in exactly the same way.
I’m currently preparing a report for a client
and I’m listing the things I’ve observed at their various workplaces
when I visited over a two-week period. My personal observations and the
discussions I had with over 1,100 employees and contractors will be
categorized into the areas of discussion listed below. What I’m
recommending to my client isn’t really different than what I would
recommend to any company that wants to excel at achieving safety
results for their considerable efforts.
Here are some of the high-level recommendations for the client and I would ask that you consider these for your company.
Make safety activities personal for everyone. To
measure is to motivate. Everyone in the company needs to help create
safety. Everyone — from the CEO to the lowest paid employee — needs to
have personal activities to assist in the creation of safety and a
culture of safety that not only holds people responsible for the
creation of safety but holds them accountable by measurement. Normally,
this is done through objective setting and measurements during
performance reviews. Make safety activities measurable and then hold
everyone responsible for doing those activities through performance
reviews.
Shift focus from ‘prevention’ to ‘creating safety’. Do
the things that have been proven to create safe environments and
behaviours. Work on those activities that have high payback. Shifting
from the negative measurements of loss and injury will empower the
workers to create safety rather than avoid injury. It’s an important
distinction that companies achieving safety excellence understand.
Identify and make critical behaviours habitual. Select
behaviours that you want to become a habit and work on strategies and
tactics with your employees to get those behaviours to happen naturally
— not unlike wearing a seatbelt, which has become a habit for most of
us. A common example of making something habitual is taking medication
or vitamins on a regular basis. Following the ABC — activator,
behaviour, consequence — model of human behaviour, the first thing one
needs to do is to activate the new behaviour of taking the pill.
Leaving the pills in a place where you will notice them will increase
the chances that you will remember to take them. Experiencing the
consequences of being healthier and having the internal feeling of
doing something positive for your health will be a natural consequence
of the regimen. It is extremely important to choose these behaviours
with your employees. Simply giving them a list of behaviours without
allowing them to be part of the decision process leads to less than
stellar performance.
Increase the use of tools/equipment and inspection checklists. For
us to be safe at work, it’s essential that we use the right tools and
that those tools are in good working order. The right equipment to do
our work is essential. Serious injuries and fatalities happen because of
people using the wrong equipment for a critical task or when the
equipment used is not up to standard. Each time we do an inspection, we
should ensure that everything we need to do our work is in place.
Increase the observations of safe/unsafe behaviours. The
real benefits of behaviour observations are the discussions they
create — not the “observation cards.” Far too many companies gradually
shift their goal to the number of observation cards.
Improve the number and quality of safety discussions. Have
great safety discussions and meetings. We can do this by first
defining what a great meeting would look like, and then go about
creating meetings that happen the way we designed them. Participants in
the meeting need to have the power to give input into the meeting
process and content. Without their input, these meetings have little
chance of achieving the expectations of the participants. Make the
participants responsible for the design and quality of the safety
meetings that are held.
Creating safety is much different than preventing injuries and loss.
When companies change their focus to better align their safety
activities to their business processes, their safety outcomes improve.
There’s an old saying that’s been attributed to a number of famous
people, and it goes like this: “Do what I do and you’ll get what I
get.” I usually like to give credit for the statement to Edwards
Deming, who not only taught us how to improve production, but that if
we use the same approach and processes, we’ll get much improved safety
results.
Alan Quilley is the president of Safety Results Ltd., a Sherwood Park, Alta., OH&S consulting company, and author of The Emperor Has No Hard Hat and Creating and Maintaining a Practical Based Safety Culture. Visit his blog at www.safetyresults.wordpress.com.
Have asset-intensive industries learned anything from recent disasters and world events?
The predictable answer is, “Yes, of course we did!” followed by a litany
of changes in operational management procedures, regulatory proposals
and enhancements to the risk-analysis parts of our engineering
practices.
However, a more candid answer might be, “Not enough.” The risk analysis
game is changing right under our noses, and not for the better. The
industry may be grossly underestimating its potential liabilities. Over
the years, potential liabilities from accidents have jumped from
calculable with a decent level of certainty to incalculable with a high
degree of uncertainty. Risk analysis and risk management are struggling
to keep up.
Numerically speaking, risk can be simplified to a formula: anticipated
cost multiplied by likelihood or, if deemed likely, multiplied by
frequency. Common sense tells us, however, these estimates and
predictions will never be easy. Actual costs from roughly similar
operating failures and accidents can vary from a few million dollars to
more than a billion dollars, an enormous range to fit into any
calculation. Because they require predicting the future,
likelihood/frequency can be even harder to quantify.
Among many other imponderables in risk analysis are the consequences of
on-the-spot operational decisions that have enormously different
consequences. An example comes from two drilling rigs owned by
Transocean Ltd., one of the world’s largest offshore drilling
contractors, and decisions made just a few days apart in April 2010. The
decisions were to replacing drilling fluids (“mud”) with seawater, a
common practice in offshore operations. On both rigs, blowouts occurred.
The blowout on one rig, Sedco 711 in the North Sea, was contained by the
rig’s blowout preventer; there were no serious injuries and damage was
less than US$10 million. The other blowout was the Deepwater Horizon in
the Gulf of Mexico. As it caught fire, exploded and sank, 11 workers
died. For BP, to which Transocean had contracted Deepwater Horizon, that
disaster has led to pretax charges against earnings of US$43.5 billion
as of May 2011.
Virtually all industry players are rethinking how they design, engineer
and build for the Gulf of Mexico. The same is true for Canada’s
sprawling oilsands in Northern Alberta and the pipeline projects that
get this oil to market.
Technological advances need to go hand in hand with changes in corporate
culture. Designers need to speak out about risks they perceive and
explain why they are skeptical. Risk analysts and risk managers need to
be more open to the skeptics and be more skeptical themselves about
safety margins, engineering rules of thumb, and industry standards that
have been in use for many years.
Upper managements need to allocate time and money in globally
competitive marketplaces for deep dives into real-world risks and
liabilities, and ascertaining the ramifications of responsibilities and
decisions.
In oil & gas, engineers are tasked with designing equipment that
grows bigger and more complex every year. As every engineer is taught,
uncertainty can grow geometrically, and perhaps even exponentially, as
size and complexity increase. Layers of uncertainty pile on — starting
with who really, deep down, fully understands how these enormous new oil
& gas structures work. Economy of scale leads to mammoth projects
to extract hydrocarbons profitably from increasingly difficult places.
Industry standards, safety factors and rules of thumb have a built-in
bias toward incremental steps and away from innovation. And in part due
to litigation, a hostile media and unfriendly regulators, risk taking is
being discouraged just when it’s most needed. Unfortunately these
challenges aren’t going away anytime soon. From a business perspective,
however, understanding risks properly can be an opportunity to
differentiate one’s firm from the competition.
Risk-analysis experts are fully aware that many time-honored guidelines
no longer stand up to scrutiny. Common sense tells us these guidelines
bear hidden risks of their own; over-reliance on them makes iffy
situations worse. This adds up to what SimuTech Group regards as Exhibit
A for the transformation in the ways we look at risk.
Engineering-intensive organizations, such as SimuTech Group, are being
contracted more frequently to apply the latest numerical techniques and
solutions — especially for analytics, the science of understanding
inherent behaviors of systems. Our insights, based on decades of
experience, are sought by many oil & gas companies to beef up their
internal risk-analysis processes.
Over the past 20-plus years, we have learned that nothing is ever
foolproof. Nor are there any straightforward, easily grasped answers,
much as we wish there were. We at SimuTech Group believe the oil &
gas industry has entered a new era of risk analysis and risk management.
In this new era, anything may be dangerous if its engineering relies on
outdated company safety margins/factors, obsolete engineering rules of
thumb, or industry standards that no longer apply. We can help build the
requisite body of knowledge, put it through peer review and then
transfer that knowledge to the users’ simulation tools and, finally, add
it to their best practices.
There are four fundamental factors in up-to-date risk analyses:
Accidents and spills, even in remote areas, are televised and often go viral on YouTube and other social media.
There is no real security for corporate and professional
reputations in conforming to guidelines, yesterday’s or today’s. Many
once-reliable margins, rules and standards have been made irrelevant.
They are industry road kill, kicked to the curb by technology, economics
and the steady accumulation of experience and understanding of the
systems and components we build.
Caps on damage liabilities, statutory or otherwise, have been
made meaningless by litigation, especially in the U.S. Litigation can
dwarf all the other costs of an accident combined; for engineers, it is
becoming the risk factor.
Liabilities have become open ended and can quickly can add two or three zeroes to a company’s exposure.
This means conventional, tried-and-true risk metrics cannot reliably
assess the scale, scope and magnitude of foreseeable impacts —
especially if the metrics are simply based on the costs of reimbursing
customers for failed components, assemblies or systems.
Constraining the liability metrics to a bill of materials is completely
inadequate and unrealistic. This blinkered approach can lead to grossly
underestimating potential impacts. This is why traditional risk analysis
is losing ground to the more predictive approach of failure mode and
effects analysis (FMEA).
Other factors are at work in the persistent underestimation of risk. At
the leading edge in any industry, accidents happen more frequently than
across the entire industry; this is obscured by industry averages
commonly used to calculate risks. Historical industry data underestimate
future costs of spills, blowouts, fires and rig explosions; some
indirect costs may have been left out.
Conventional risk analyses usually represent too conservative a view of
conditions in the field, and often embody outdated views of components
and systems. This gets to an engineering and risk-analysis paradox: What
seems like a prudent, and even cautious, approach itself has hidden
risks, in some of them unacceptably high.
Risk lies at the heart of engineering. For us at SimuTech Group dealing
successfully with risk is the heart of engineering, and thus at the
heart of innovation as well.
What to do? Start with words, numbers and expertise. “Failures in
waiting” is a much more descriptive, and more accurate, way to
characterize risks than “potential liabilities.” Viewing risk as the sum
of potential liabilities can never suffice. It’s too easy to ignore or
rationalize away, and won’t grab the attention of hard-pressed upper
managements. “Potential” merely implies a probabilistic eventuality, a
statistical function, a bell-shaped curve. Statistics, dry or otherwise,
rarely change the course of events except maybe after the fact, when
it’s too late.
Then insist on questioning all the numbers in every risk evaluation.
That won’t be easy, of course, but avoiding euphemisms in favor of more
compelling terminology should help garner the necessary support in time,
data and budget. And finally, outside expertise can be of enormous
value. n
After a year and a half of development, Saskatoon-based DynaIndustrial
recently created a custom piece of equipment at the request of
PotashCorp for its expanding Rocanville, Sask., potash mine. The
low-ceiling-height roof bolter, named the DynaBolter, is used to secure
potash mine ceilings, eliminating the need for a worker to manually
install roof bolts.
Since 1970, DynaIndustrial been focused on helping companies in various
industries improve their process productivity by designing and
developing custom equipment, primarily serving steel mills, pipe mills,
and mining and oil and gas companies.
DynaIndustrial recently completed the design and prototyping of a
custom roof bolter at the request of PotashCorp’s Rocanville mine
located in Southern Saskatchewan. DynaIndustrial spent the last year
and a half developing the DynaBolter to fit the expanding mine’s
specific underground requirements.
“Many meetings were held to refine the details of the equipment and
their requirements,” DynaIndustrial general manager Darrin Craig said.
“DynaIndustrial modeled the bolter and used that model as the basis for
most of the meetings. Both maintenance and operations staff at the mine
were involved in the meetings to provide their input on the design.
After the machine was delivered, a number of changes were made to
improve the functionality and reliability of the machine.
“We are frequently in contact with the mine on the bolter to provide
training of new personnel and update or modify the machine as required.”
Currently, the company has four different models at various stages of
development and is working with several other potash mines to develop a
bolter to meet their specific requirements. Agrium Potash Corp. in
Calgary and Mosaic Potash in Saskatchewan have also just purchased the
newly created piece of machinery for their underground mines.
According to DynaIndustrial, the DynaBolter significantly improves the
safety and efficiency of the bolt installation process, and the machine
can be adapted to different applications from its original intended
use. The equipment eliminates the need for a worker to manually install
roof bolts. Instead, a single operator can now drill and install up to
five bolts from their seat.
“The reason that mines use roof bolters is to stabilize the back (or
roof) of the mine to prevent cave-ins or loose rock or potash from
falling,” Craig says of the technology’s purpose.
Prior to the new equipment, safety concerns came into play because the
task of drilling through loose or unstable back can cause rock to fall.
“In certain situations with existing equipment, personnel are directly
under where they are drilling and bolting thus being exposed to falling
rock,” he explains. With the DynaBolter, the work is done 15 feet away
from where the drilling or bolting is taking place.
“The cab is certified for falling object and roll-over protection to
protect the operator,” Craig adds. “Thus, the operator is not exposed
the hazards.”
Features also include a “state-of-the-art” hydraulic control panel that
has on-screen tutorials, making training and operating simple for any
worker. The machine runs on diesel and is extremely agile for its low
profile. The DynaBolter can be integrated onto existing pieces of
equipment that mines are already using.
The company’s engineering team uses the latest 3D modeling software and
finite element analysis (FEA) software to optimize equipment design
while keeping in mind manufacturing, maintenance and safety.
“DynaIndustrial uses Autodesk Inventor 3D modeling software, and we use
Algor FEA software,” Craig specifies.
Additionally, “the DynaBolter would not have been possible without the
co-operation and support of the Rocanville potash mine and the efforts
of the dedicated personnel at this mine,” the company said in a press
announcement. www.dynaindustrial.com
Don't Get Hosed: Reduce downtime with hose maintenance and safety procedures
Never underestimate the consequences of a failed oilfield hose: downtime, cost overruns, lost production, missed schedules, personal injury, property damage and the failure of associated equipment. Just installing the best-coupled hoses is not enough to ensure optimal operation on an oil rig. Proper handling, storage, use and maintenance of rotary drilling and vibrator hose assemblies are essential for long-lasting performance and safety.
Maintenance and Safety The selection and maintenance of hydraulic hose components for oil drilling equipment can spell the difference between productivity and costly downtime, especially when the work site is miles away from the nearest parts distributor or repair shop.
• Identify Hydraulic Leakages: The first step in any preventive maintenance program involves training equipment operators and maintenance personnel about how to identify and remedy leaky hydraulic hose assemblies. Machine operators need to be aware that although the appearance of dirt on hoses and fittings is an obvious indication of hydraulic leakage, leaks often send fluids into other equipment surfaces and must be traced to their source.
Tracing the leak to its source may require machine operators to do some detective work. If hoses appear excessively wet around their fittings, check for loose couplings. If the coupling is tight, this is an indication the coupling/hose interface has reached its service life and should be replaced.
• Look for Abrasions: A frequent cause of leakage in hydraulic hoses for oil drilling equipment is abrasions resulting from cuts, friction caused by other moving parts, or from mechanical impacts. For example, hose-to-hose abrasions are likely to show up where lengths of hose travel through a boom. Hose-to-metal abrasion can occur where hoses travel through a bulkhead. In many cases, abrasion problems will be apparent during an inspection, and replacement can be initiated before failure occurs. Hose covers that are cut, torn or worn through will allow reinforcement wire or textile braids to deteriorate and/or rust. These hose assemblies must be replaced immediately. Hose manufacturers now offer a variety of hose products with abrasion-resistant covers.
• Follow Proper Assembly Procedures: Another cause of leaks can be the improper assembly of replacement hoses, which can occur when mating surfaces on couplings are incompatible, when couplings are improperly attached to the hose or when the hose assembly is installed incorrectly.
Assembly problems can be avoided by following the crimp and assembly recommendations of the manufacturer of the products being used. One common cause of failure is incorrect crimping that occurs when a hose is cut incorrectly or when the stem of a coupling is not inserted all the way into the hose. Be aware of worn die fingers when using older model crimpers. Die wear is a real concern, especially on dead step crimpers. When die fingers get worn, the crimp can become loose, and eventually, a hose assembly blowout is inevitable.
Gates engineers say 80 percent of all hydraulic failures are due to fluid contamination that often results when metal shavings and rubber dust are not thoroughly removed during fabrication of the hose assembly. Preventive measures include blowing air through the hose, flushing the hose with a solvent, or using a cleaning kit with a sponge projectile after the couplings are attached.
• Allow a Margin of Safety: When choosing a replacement hose, check the manufacturer’s specifications for pressure and temperature ratings. Hose dimensions can be critical, as well. It is important to determine the correct inside and outside hose diameters using a precision-engineered caliper. The outer diameter is especially important when hose routing clamps are used, or when hoses are routed through bulkheads. Check individual hose specification tables for outer diameters in suppliers’ catalogs.
The inside hose diameter must be capable of handling the required fluid flow without generating back pressure. It is not uncommon for pumps to deliver more than 200 gallons of fluid per minute to hydraulic cylinders and motors in various types of heavy-duty equipment, which is why it is important to know the type of hose and the working pressure in a system when making replacements. When in doubt about the system pressure, cut the failed hose and determine whether the type of reinforcement is one or two wire braids, or four or six spiral wires.
In situations where equipment has been modified to perform special operations, it is not uncommon to see spikes in hydraulic pressure that the hose and coupling manufacturer did not anticipate. As a general rule, when choosing hose to transmit fluid under pressure, it’s best to allow a generous margin of safety.
• Establish Correct Hose Length: When making a new hose assembly, always make sure it is the same length as the one being removed. Too long an assembly can lead to the hose being severed or pinched in the moving components of the equipment. If the replacement hose assembly is too short, pressure may cause the hose to contract and place excessive stress (tug) at the coupling.
Changes in hose length when pressurized range from plus-two to minus-four percent while hydraulic mechanisms are in operation. So, allow for possible shortening of the hose during operation by making the hose lengths slightly longer than the actual distance between the two connections.
• Consider Temperature Requirements: All hoses are rated with a maximum working temperature ranging from 200°F (93°C) to 350°F (177°C) based on the fluid temperature. Exposure to continuous high temperatures can lead to hoses losing their flexibility. Failure to use hydraulic oil with the proper viscosity to hold up under high temperatures can accelerate this problem.
External temperatures become a factor when hoses are exposed to heat from a turbo manifold or some other source. When hoses are exposed to high external and internal temperatures concurrently, there will be a considerable reduction in hose service life.
• Choose the Right Connections: Permanent and field-attachable couplings are common on oil-field equipment. The choice of permanent or field-attachable couplings is often influenced by cost, convenience, the type of application, manufacturer’s recommendations, the environment in which the assembly will be used and possible regulatory requirements.
Permanent fittings provide greater performance capability and durability, plus the availability of inexpensive crimpers increases their ease of use.
The JIC (Joint Industry Conference) hydraulic seal is popular among equipment designers because of its performance versatility, availability and low cost. However, metal-to-metal seals found in the traditional JIC 37° couplings can leak when the metal surfaces grind into each other and leave distortions.
• Don’t Mix and Match: Gates engineers recommend against using couplings from one manufacturer and hoses from a different manufacturer interchangeably. Although most American-made hydraulic hoses, and many imported hoses, are built to conform to SAE (Society of Automotive Engineers) specifications, SAE allows a whole range of materials to be used. Different manufacturers use different materials, which can result in a variety of hose styles.
The proliferation of thread ends from around the world in recent years has dramatically increased the possibility of mismatching threads and seats on various couplings. For example, the only differences between a conventional SAE coupling and a foreign coupling are the thread configuration and the seat angle. The ability to correctly identify all of the different types of coupling can help prevent costly mistakes when assembling replacement hoses.
Also keep in mind that rubber O-rings are not interchangeable with all couplings.
• Follow Proper Installation Procedures: Improper installation of replacement assemblies is another prime cause of leaks in hydraulic hose assemblies. One common installation error results from twisting hoses as they are being tightened. Pressure applied to a twisted hose can result in hose failure or loosening of connections, sometimes referred to as de-torquing. Always take into account the manufacturer’s recommended minimum bend radius and avoid routes that twist the hose or cause it to bend immediately behind the coupling. The use of two wrenches (one on the hex nut and one on the stem nut) while tightening the swivel fittings will help prevent twisting.
When a coupling is leaking, there is a natural tendency to tighten the fitting. However, over torquing couplings can also lead to leakage problems. Proper torquing is especially critical when flared fittings are used. Too much tightening can result in thread stripping, or deflection or scratching of the cone seat and will prevent proper sealing.
• Be Prepared: In the oil drilling industry, remote job sites are typical. Being miles from the nearest distributor may require keeping and inventory of hydraulic hoses and fittings on hand, along with a crimper, to minimize downtime. Hydraulic parts distributors can provide a selection of hoses, fittings, crimper and training necessary to meet emergency situations.
The workers, contractors and maintenance professionals in the Canadian resource sector face unique challenges when it comes to workplace safety and injury prevention. In the oil sands, the issues of safety are magnified, with manufacturers operating heavy equipment and trucks, managing incredibly large physical assets and dealing with higher-than-average worker turnover.
REM hosted this roundtable event to present you, our readers, with guidance and positive examples of safety leadership and ideas - to help companies of all stripes reach a top-line level of safety performance. Participants assembled in Fort McMurray, Alta., and discussed everything from the importance of developing and maintaining a vibrant safety culture to how a commitment to safety is just good business.
Alberta looks at the end result Every province in Canada has its own health and safety legislation, so the discussed started off with a look at what, if any, differences existed between them. Brian Malloch, president of the Plant Engineering and Maintenance Association of Canada (PEMAC), says there is very little difference. “If you’re familiar with one, you’re likely familiar and reasonably compliant with another.”
It comes down to nuances. Sheila Bailey, owner of Fort McMurray-based Bailey Technical Services, a health, safety and environmental consultancy, explains that Ontario legislation is more prescriptive while Alberta focuses on expected results. “Ontario prescribes when you need a joint health and safety (JHS) committee and what their duties are whereas the Alberta legislation is looking at the end result,” she says. “You have to take all precautions, showing your due diligence - and if one of the ways to do that is to have an active JHS committee and do workplace inspections, then that’s what we do because it is the best practices.”
Developing a safety culture The driving force behind developing an improvement in injury prevention is visible leadership, a commitment to change and employee involvement with a proper accountability structure.
However, maintenance and operations departments have a high level of responsibility in keeping their workers safe. “The managers of both these groups probably have the highest number of people that are exposed to a hazard,” says David Robinson, vice-president of business integration improvement with FT Services Ltd. “There’s a lot of control and planning required to make that happen well and happen dependably well.” He mentioned that, historically, people used to die during confined space work and now it’s a rarity thanks in part to mitigating the risk through training and independent assessments.
“Creating that culture and passion around doing things really well and preparing things really well before you start is a real challenge for maintenance managers and for operations managers, and I’d say it’s especially difficult here [in Fort McMurray],” he continues. “There are a lot of good people here that are very passionate about the place, but every week there are thousands of people flying in and out of this region that don’t call it home.” Managing a transient workforce Robinson continues: “Their backgrounds are so different that maintenance managers and for operations managers are continually battling this culture wave to lift their team up, and that’s diluted by new people coming in. It’s a real challenge in this region, more than I’ve seen elsewhere.”
Tim Gondek, executive director of the Oil Sands Safety Association (OSSA), says leadership and vision is critical in their region to manage such a transient workforce. “The industry has great standards, great processes, great policies; we have safety systems, we have risk assessment; we have all the items of an excellent management system,” he says, “but it can only be effective if people are living up to it. You rely on leadership and supervision to constantly project the importance of following the rules or making sure people have the right skills and training to do the job.”
Because of the transient workforce, Tom McWilliams - the oil-sands environment, health and safety program manager with Suncor Energy Services - says the formula is simple: new workers on a site or those in a new role, are more likely to get injured. The longer they’re there, the less likely they are to get injured. “It’s pretty straightforward. We reinforce our hazard awareness and competency programs to ensure that new and experienced workers alike receive the highest standard of resources and training to do their job safely.”
So how does one get the passion to filter from those at the top down to the everyday worker? “As much as I like to think that my company reflects my passion for safety, if you ask a boilermaker in the field, his passion for safety is a reflection of his superintendent/supervisor,” Robinson says. “My influence on him is very indirect, very arm’s length. So we need to focus on that superintendent/supervisor level so they are capable coaches.”
Relaying a story from personal experience, he says his company has assigned new employees someone from the same region to be a liaison, providing them with a mentor to address culture and language issues. “In some cultures, they won’t admit they don’t know, it’s such a loss of face, and it makes them fearful of losing their jobs,” he says. “I think it’s important to have someone in authority who makes a connection with them somehow.” Visual cues and emotional response Bailey interjects with a query about how to deal with English not necessarily being the first language of many of the workers.
Gondek responds: “Talking about English as a second language, it’s not really the language that’s the challenge, it’s about making sure people understand what the expectation is,” he says. “Regardless of what language you speak and what position you are, if you see everyone wearing safety glasses and wearing the proper boots and wearing the proper gloves, you don’t need a rule. People know that, ‘When I’m in Fort McMurray, it’s clear that safety is important to everyone, because that’s what people do.’ ”
As far as company initiatives to help new employees navigate the workplace, Suncor has implemented a “green-hat program,” which identifies new employees with a green hat. McWilliams explains: “The green hat program is basically, ‘I’m a new employee, so watch out for me a little bit more than you would for a longstanding employee until I have built that experience and knowledge about hazards in our workplace.’ ”
“And there’s a psychological impact that comes with it,” Robinson adds. A new employee would have to tell themselves: “ ‘I’m putting on my green hat and … it reminds me that I am new in this place and that maybe I don’t understand all the hazards.’ Getting compliance for things like green hats, safety boots - as much as they are a signal for others, I think there is a very real behavioral response in the individual themselves by causing them to go through that change.”
PEMAC’s Malloch agrees strongly with this initiative, and adds that no matter what stage an employee is in their career, “it all boils down to behaviour. And if you can instill a different type of behaviour by simply putting different triggers in place, then you’ve probably got most of the major problems beat.”
To elicit a response from the roundtable members, Malloch says, “In all my years of managing lots of different types of industries, I don’t believe I have ever met a person who went to work to get hurt. I don’t think I ever did, and I think what that means is that we’ve generally managed by statistics.”
Gondek takes it a step further, analyzing the mindset of a worker by bringing up the example for a driver going for a drive. He bet that if a driver was told, as they left the house, that they were going to die before reaching their destination, “I’m pretty sure that that their awareness of hazards and risks during that task of driving over the next half hour would be heightened.” And that, in a nutshell, is the challenge: “How do we get people into that heightened awareness without having them actually go through that negative experience?”
But accidents do happen, and it often boils down to a worker who made the decision to do the job a certain way. “Our workplaces are hazardous,” Bailey explains. “It was hazardous driving here. We try to bring the risk of something bad happening down to zero through lots of good programs and procedures - but ultimately, it’s people making decisions.” Controlling risk takers With regard to risk takers in the workplace, Robinson says FT Services runs a course called SET (“it’s like a cut-down psychology course for supervisors”) about how to assess behaviour and create change in people. For example, he says, if your coworker was yesterday on his snowmobile going 120 kilometres per hour through a forest, he or she is a risk taker. “And you expect him now to walk on site, put on his green hat and suddenly be a different person?” he asks. “It’s not going to happen. The behaviours of individuals are largely a function of their environment or their situation, so what we can do as leaders is to help with that.”
But what happens if that individual is suddenly put under a time pressure? When he or she knows how much certain periods of downtime cost a company and needs to decide if speed overrides safety. “Most people under pressure, under stress, will revert to their natural type, or that will be their dominant behaviour that will push trough. So any other learned behaviour about risk assessment, control and all that other stuff really becomes secondary, and their perception of hazards fades away. People need to be able to pull them back.” He says companies need to create that environment for people and recognize that the wrong situation may cause our people to behave in a way is not what we want.
“That’s leadership,” OSSA’s Gondek says, adding that “the passionate people, those ones who want to do good for the company, actually sometimes do the wrong thing trying to do the right thing, and give the perception to their workers, ‘We gotta get this done, gotta get this done!’ But it should be, ‘We gotta get this done safely.’ When you’re guiding people through their everyday work, remember to add safety values behind them to anchor the importance of the work being done safely.”
Suncor’s McWilliams then brings up a point that can be difficult for organizations to reconcile. “The start of the oil-sands industry is not unlike the start of other innovative industries, such as space exploration; there were some pretty substantial risks involved in these ventures. You need a company filled with people who think outside the box - improvement-minded people. They should take risks but, in certain environments, they should not deviate from the set path at all. Some employees have a very difficult time doing that. With input from our shareholders and stakeholders, we need to state what our organizational risk tolerance is and help those naturally inclined to take risks understand principles of risk management.”
Robinson agrees. He says supervisors have to respond immediately to negative behaviour, because “if you don’t create an immediate negative consequence to that behaviour,” people will naturally continue to do it because they get immediate, positive results with unknown or distant negative consequences. Slips, trips and falls McWilliams says great progress has been made industry-wide to reduce the occurrence of certain injuries, such as confined-space and fall-from-elevation injuries, thanks to robust training initiatives and inspection blitzes. However, such improvements shine the light on opportunities to reduce other types of injuries. “The injuries we are seeing most right now are slips, trips and falls and contact burns, so we are working to address them. These issues generally haven’t received the same emphasis in hazard awareness and training programs as confined space and fall protection have.” The good news, he says, is that “we can build on our learnings from these successful initiatives and apply this knowledge to our current challenges. Experience shows us that when we invest the resources in controlling specific hazards, we achieve our desired results.”
“But we manage it very tightly,” Robinson adds.
“How seriously do we take slips trips and falls?” McWilliams then asks. “Our society accepts slips, trips and falls as part of winter and part of life. Suncor does not. By understanding and mitigating the hazards in our workplace and drawing a worker’s attention to their own behaviours, we can actually prevent these from occurring. It takes effort, but it is all achievable.”
It’s all a matter prioritization, with training and consistent enforcement. “Think about seatbelts as an example,” Bailey says. “When that rule first came out, it was the oddest thing. But now it wouldn’t occur to you to get into a vehicle without seatbelts.”
“There is a lot of work we should be able to do on the front end to collaborate with our peers in education,” McWilliams says.
Regarding education, with the OSSA, Gondek says he has had discussion in high schools and trade schools about teaching safety as early as possible. “Given the high probability of a welder going to work in a confined space, give the confined space training as part of their trade instead of having to wait for them to graduate and then take it. Get all those skills up front.” Safety is good business Throughout the discussion, several of the speakers brought up the fact that safety isn’t just implemented to keep the government at bay. According to Bailey, “a company with a good safety culture is more productive,” and McWilliams concurs: “better business is better safety.”
McWilliams’s experience at Suncor has proven to him that safety initiatives rarely require return-on-investment (ROI) numbers to get the thumbs up from the executive. “Our leaders value the safety of our people above all else. They don’t often discuss ROI because, for the most part, many of our personal safety initiatives really aren’t that expensive, and they have such a profound and positive impact on our people and operations.” He says the bigger challenge is time. “Organizations have to develop a risk-based, prioritized list of the safety improvements they want to undertake so they can implement them proactively and effectively.”
“Having this list of initiative to prioritize is far more effective,” Bailey agrees, adding that merely reacting when something bad happens doesn’t equal long-term success.
“Reacting is rarely successful!” McWilliams says.
“In my career, I’ve seen it happen,” Bailey continues. “I’ve been on the side implementing it and I’ve been on the side receiving reactive-type measures - and they’re not successful.”
Another advantage to companies, such as support provider FT Services, that put a high priority on safety is that it will attract top-notch talent happy to work for a company that values an emploee’s well being. “When we (FT Services) first turned up in Alberta, no one knew us, and it was difficult at first to attract good people,” Robinson says. “Now people come back to us. So instead of having a problem attracting new tradesmen, we get to choose. Does a focus on safety really translate into a competitive advantage and return on investment? Absolutely.”
Gondek couldn’t agree more. “We’re recognizing that poor maintenance, poor reliability and poor safety actually costs the bottom line at the end of the day,” he says. “Because if you don’t have all those systems in place, you’re either in an unplanned maintenance shutdown or your site’s shut down because of an incident investigation.
“There are a lot of benefits to doing the right things. And one of the things I’ve seen going on in the last 10 years is that leadership recognizes the importance of having a safety culture. If it’s the right thing to do, you’ll never have a problem getting the money. The only time you have a challenge is when you have a long list of things you want to do, but have a level of organizational saturation of ‘new initiatives’ that prevents you from effectively implementing the change.”
André Voshart is the editor of REM.
Plan Ahead: Lean safety means managing risks at all shutdown stages
Lean safety is safety that is effective and adds the least possible overhead to the job. There is an overriding rule that the safest environment is one where safety is involved at all stages of the job - starting with conception and planning. Interestingly, that is also the way to deliver Lean safety. Tacked-on safety is fatter than planned-in safety.
I want to address how to bring safety to your shutdowns at the planning stage.
Risk management (and, in particular, risk identification) is best done as a team. The reason is that people from different backgrounds will see different potential hazards. Adding the input of millwrights, riggers, operators, engineers as well as safety people to the risk equation can only make it stronger.
The planner breaks jobs down into steps. This process helps identify resources and makes it easier to estimate. One other process made easier by work breakdown is identification of hazards. See Figure 1 - a job to remove and replace a large horizontally mounted pump - as an example.
Risk Management The three steps in the planning process are risk identification, risk quantification and risk response. The first two are sometimes grouped together under risk analysis or risk assessment.
1. Risk identification: Is there a risk here? Address both internal (under the team’s control) and external (outside world) risks.
2. Risk quantification: How much money will the event cost? How much time will it delay the completion? What is the likelihood of the risky event happening? How many people will get hurt and how hurt will they get?
3. Risk response: What is the response? How costly is it to respond? How likely will the response eliminate the risk? Can we transfer the risk to someone else (like fixed-price contracts or insurance)? Does the response introduce any unanticipated risk?
Once underway, employ risk vigilance. Ask yourself, “How do we organize our team so that when a risk becomes apparent we find out so we have enough time to respond?” In addition to vigilance, respond to changes in the character of the risks over the span of the project.
A reference hazard table is a list of all known hazards at this (or any) site. There are always three options to deal with risk: to accept it and do nothing; to remove or eliminate the risk; and to mitigate the risk. In Figure 2, there is an example of two of the three options for each hazard.
Job safety analysis (JSA) is the process we use to detect hazards and decide what to do with them. The purpose of a JSA is to ensure that the risk of each step of a task is reduced to ALARP (as low as reasonably practicable). Examine each step and see if any of the hazards from the list are likely, probable or possible (high, medium or low probability).
If we take just a few steps from the job plan, as in Figure 3, we can see what risks are present and based on the impact and probability of occurrence we can decide on a course of action. It is Lean to run a shutdown without killing or hurting someone. Think ahead: safety is less expensive if it is planned into the job rather than tacked on afterward.
So now go forth and have safe shutdowns.
Joel Levitt is president of U.S.-based Springfield Resources. You can reach him by email at
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Now that we’ve ensured this person meets minimum standards, we need to go about training that individual.
Some of you may ask: “If I’ve gone through all this trouble to ensure
that my new employee meets minimum standards, then why do I have to
train him? Shouldn’t he be adequately trained already?” While that may
be true to a certain extent, what we need to remember is that the
worker is still new. New to your company, new to your facility, new to
the specific tools and equipment your company operates and new to your
work procedures. This situation places your new employee at greater
risk for injury or illness.
When I had my consulting practice, I had the opportunity to witness a
multitude of different types of training practices. Some were quite
complicated and some were very simple. Some were very effective and
some had little effect at all. So what makes a good workplace training
program?
Let’s start out by stating that having a worker simply read a safe work
procedure or a work instruction does not constitute training.
Merriam-Webster defines training as the process necessary “to teach so
as to make fit, qualified, or proficient.” From this definition, we can
infer that training requires some interaction between a trainer and a
trainee. By referencing the word “proficient,” the definition also
implies the need for testing. Therefore, when we are talking about
workplace training, we are really talking about the imparting of
necessary skills or behaviors through instruction from a competent
person to ensure the safe and efficient completion of a task.
One of the best workplace training programs I ever witnessed was being
used in one of the most unlikely places I had ever expected to observe
it: a fast-food restaurant. Some time ago, I worked with a
multinational fast-food restaurant to help them make some improvements
to their health and safety management system. In order to secure the
contract, I had to agree to be “hired,” go through their training
program and work in the back of the house for two weeks. What I learned
in those two weeks I took with me and have applied in all of my
employment settings ever since.
This fast-food restaurant chain had an ingenious training system and
they had it down to a science. They called it “Four Corner” training.
They called it such because training for each and every task consisted
of four simple steps. The first step involved the employee reading and
viewing the training materials associated with the task procedure. Once
the new hire completed this first step, he or she proceeded onto the
next step: knowledge testing. If they are not successful in completing
the quiz, their trainer would discuss the answers with them and then
they had to go back to the beginning and go through the training
materials until they could successfully pass the quiz with a score of
no less than 90 percent.
Having successfully completed the knowledge component of the training,
the trainee went on to the practical. The worker would go out onto the
floor with the trainer and was shown how to complete the task safely,
in accordance with the written job procedure. Once shown how to do the
task, the worker then had to demonstrate to the trainer that he or she
could complete the task safely and following the correct steps. The
trainer had a performance observation checklist that guided him on what
to look for. If the worker could not successfully demonstrate that he
could complete the task, then the trainer would once again show the
worker how to complete the task while providing key points on how to
improve. This continued until the worker could satisfy all of the
requirements on the checklist.
This four-step approach to training used by this company accomplished
several things. First off, it established an environment of trust
between worker and supervisor. This is critical if workers are to feel
comfortable about reporting hazards and incidents. Secondly, it creates
a firm foundation on which to develop competent workers and we know
that competent workers are far less likely to become injured on the
job. Finally, having the task training documented provides the employer
with a valuable tool to demonstrate due diligence should it ever be
required. Clearly, the training system was a win-win for both workers
and management.
There are some situations in which workplace training is not as simple.
What if your workforce comes from a different culture? What do you do?
Clearly, there are no simple answers but there are some things that you
can do. Those things will be discussed in my next column.
Arc welding is safe when sufficient measures are taken to protect the welder from potential hazards. Before starting your next project, be sure to understand and follow safe practices to protect yourself from such hazards as electric shock, fires and explosions, fumes and gases and arc rays.
Caterpillar introduced the Cat Integrated Object Detection System that's designed to enhance mine site safety. The system was developed after extensive research by Caterpillar showed that 70 percent of haulage truck accidents at mine sites occur during initial machine start up and low-speed movement.
After a year and a half of development, Saskatoon-based 
Over the last couple of columns in 
