DuPont Safety Award Winners 2013

Adana Cement: Safety Performance Improvement

Adana Cement Industry is a Turkish company with production facilities across the Mediterranean region and Cyprus.  The company operates plants in Adana – a facility dating back more than 50 years – and Iskenderun that allow for an annual production capacity of 2 million tons of grey clinker, 300,000 tons of white clinker, 5.15 million tons of grey cement and 350,000 tons of white cement. With a rich history domestically, Adana Cement Industry aspires to become a global leader in the area of cement use, while maintaining high standards of social and environmental responsibility.

A key element in the company’s efforts to ensure a safe work environment has been its ongoing commitment to improving occupational health and safety standards in line with international best practices. After launching initial activities in 2004, Adana Cement Industry established an integrated OHSAS 18001-certified Safety Management System in 2005, before implementing further processes and improvements in 2008 after recognition that 96 percent of accidents were caused by dangerous behaviors, rather than conditions.

Together, these initiatives have had a profound effect in shaping a positive safety culture among employees. In particular, a multi-faceted approach, including behavior-oriented site visits, accident information meetings, reward and sanction practices, and a schedule of continuous training programs, has resulted in a dramatic decrease in employee and sub-contractor accidents since 2008, based on statistics collected since 2003. A new record of 243 uninterrupted days without an accident was achieved in 2012, in a period when expanding production objectives were successfully met.

Abu Dhabi Marine Operating Company:  Innovative Approach to Safety

The Abu Dhabi Marine Operating Company is considered a major global producer of oil and gas through its offshore facilities in the United Arab Emirates. It is a regional pioneer in hydrocarbon production, and the development of ADMA-OPCO’s operations parallels the striking economic and cultural transformation of Abu Dhabi itself. The company’s core assets include two major oil field concessions: Umm Shaif, which lies 150 kilometres northwest of Abu Dhabi city; and Zakum, 55 kilometers southeast of Umm Shaif and one of the largest offshore oilfields in the world. Each has yielded a constant flow of oil and gas to ADMA-OPCO’s processing infrastructure for about 50 years. Das Island, which is about 180 kilometers from the city of Abu Dhabi, is the industrial base. As part of its long-term sustainable production plan, the company has embarked on a fast-paced development program for new fields (i.e. Satah Al Razboot (SARB), NASR and Umm Lulu).

In line with the company’s aim to achieve the highest standards of health and safety – backed by strategic use of global performance data – ADMA-OPCO developed the Green Hands program after recognizing that a number of accidents had involved new or redeployed staff commencing their work duties without comprehensive safety training. The program includes mandatory safety inductions, tailored orientation activities (including on-site), wearing a symbolic green hard hat until the orientation program is completed and a follow-up report carried out, and spot audits to ensure effective implementation.

In the period since the Green Hands program began, ADMA-OPCO has totally eliminated accidents involving new workers. Impressively, this has been achieved without any additional costs – in fact, the initiative has led to an actual cost saving by avoiding the negative impact of lost time injuries. Similarly, the program itself is easily transferable and continues to be improved on the basis of comprehensive risk assessment reviews.

AES Kyivoblenergo: Visible Management Commitment to Safety

AES Kyivoblenergo is the Ukrainian subsidiary of the leading power company AES Corporation, operating a diverse portfolio of electricity-generation and distribution businesses worldwide. AES Corporation provides sustainable energy to clients in 27 countries via a workforce of more than 27,000 employees and with annual revenues topping $18 billion. Acquired in 2001 as one of two major holdings in Ukraine alongside AES Rivneoblenergo, AES Kyivoblenergo provides electricity distribution and supply services through more than 2,800 staff to approximately 900,000 customers in the Kyiv region. In total, the company’s activities encompass approximately 45,000 square meters of transmission facilities supporting yearly energy consumption of 5.4 billion kilowatts.

Inspired by the company’s goal of developing a robust safety culture reflecting individual responsibility and active involvement, AES Kyivoblenergo established a Safety Steering Committee, which is chaired by the CEO and consists of all top leaders of the company. This committee coordinates all safety programs, and defines goals and tasks for main safety activities in conjunction with the EHS department. In addition, they are assigned to a specific unit of the company for three months, during which they assist in the organization of “safety days” and provide personnel with feedback on safety performance. Experiences from these three-month assignments are then shared with other steering committee members, allowing for the development of best practices to be used in the future.

Reflecting the strides the company has made in developing coherent processes to manage health and safety effectively, AES Kyivoblenergo achieved certification in line with OHSAS 18001: 2007 and ISO 14001: 2004 in 2011. Seeking to further embed an organizational commitment to continual improvement when it comes to safety, the company undertook a series of activities in 2012 to ensure its compliance with these international standards.

Kuwait Petroleum International (Q8 Brand): Sustainable Corporate Footprint

Kuwait Petroleum International (Q8 Brand) is a subsidiary of the state-owned Kuwait Petroleum Corporation (KPC). Established in 1983, Q8 is the international arm of KPC, which brings together all the elements of the Kuwaiti oil sector under a single corporate umbrella and is recognized as one of the world’s top-10 energy conglomerates. The company’s main focus is on refining and marketing fuel, lubricants and other petroleum derivatives outside Kuwait, including more than 4,000 service stations across Europe, an international diesel service dedicated to the needs of road transport companies, and jet fuel provision to more than 50 airports. In total, KPI employs approximately 4,000 full-time staff.

In line with Q8’s organizationwide commitment to sustainability, the company’s operating units in Italy and Sweden developed two innovative ‘Sustainable Filling Stations’ projects. In Italy, this took the form of the ‘Q8 Z.E.R.O.’ initiative, in which all emissions generated throughout the network of 110 facilities are offset by advanced engineering practices, renewable energy installations and forest plantations.

In Sweden, the ‘OKQ8 Haggvik Sustainable Filling Station’ is specially constructed to maximize the use of sustainable materials, while employing geothermal heating and cooling, solar panels and rainwater for the car wash, solar cells for energy production, and a green sedum grass roof for lower energy consumption. Each of these projects has demonstrated impressive sustainability results to date. In Italy, carbon dioxide emission reductions have increased every month and reached 250 tons per month by March 2012. In Sweden, the ground-breaking new filling station design has led to a 50 percent decrease in energy.

Arcelor MittalTermirtau:  Cultural Evolution in Safety or Sustainability

Through ArcelorMittal Temirtau JSC – which was founded in its original domestic incarnation in 1960 – ArcelorMittal is among the largest players in Kazakhstan’s steel and mining sector.  Owning and operating one of the world’s biggest single-site integrated steel plants in Temirtau, eight coal mines in the Karaganda region and four iron ore mines in central and northern Kazakhstan, the company achieved an overall production output of 3.6 million tons of liquid steel, 10.6 million tons of coal and 3.5 million tons of iron ore in 2011.

Aligned with ArcelorMittal’s firmwide commitment to becoming the world’s safest steel and mining corporation embodied in the ‘Journey to Zero’ campaign, ArcelorMittal Temirtau JSC embarked upon a comprehensive revamp of health and safety processes at its facilities in Kazakhstan through a multifaceted focus on staff training, the roll-out of a housekeeping program in line with the influential ‘5S’ implementation method, the establishment of a four-step safety control system and the institution of a disciplined scheme of shop-floor audits.

Together, these initiatives not only resulted in cleaner and tidier workplaces subject to more proactive safety monitoring and risk management, but also an improved sense of collective responsibility for removing occupational hazards via mandatory training and involvement of managers and shop-floor personnel alike. Most importantly, the ensuing cultural shift saw an impressive reduction in the number of recorded industrial accidents, which declined from 1,475 in 1996 to 34 in 2011.

Engro Fertilizer: Stakeholder Engagement for Sustainability

Engro Fertilizers is a wholly owned subsidiary of leading Pakistani conglomerate Engro Corp. Dating back to 1965 in its original incarnation as the Esso Pakistan Fertilizer Company, Engro Corp has since diversified into the food, energy, manufacturing and chemicals sectors, while continuing to grow its core fertilizer business. Since 2010, Engro Fertilizers has operated as an independent fertilizer manufacturing and marketing company, and runs the world’s largest single train urea-ammonium plant at Daharki – the most significant fertilizer expansion project in the history of Pakistan. The company’s workforce of more than 1,000 employees focuses exclusively on production and distribution for the domestic market, including phosphate-based products imported from abroad.

In line with a history of social engagement, Engro Fertilizers is committed to ensuring the communities living around its manufacturing site are aware of relevant operational hazards, and that effective mitigation measures are in place. To achieve this objective, the company has developed the Community Awareness and Emergency Response (CAER) program, both to initiate counter actions in case of any catastrophic failure at the Daharki plant, and to improve local living standards by fostering community-based sustainable development.

Focusing initially on three villages situated within a 2-kilometer radius of the major manufacturing facility, the CAER program has been structured predominantly – following a rigorous socioeconomic needs survey – around stakeholder engagement activities, infrastructure improvements, the initiation of social projects, school ‘adoptions’ and safety training and drills. Based on encouraging progress to date, the program is scheduled to expand to another four villages while further consolidating the outreach activities already undertaken in pilot communities guided by a three-phase engagement model.