Challenge
Reducing the occurrence of High Potential Incidents (HiPo) in our industry requires a commitment to learning and continuous improvement.
With a history dating back over 150 years and currently employing 44,000 people across more than 300 sites, Downer is a leading provider of integrated services in Australia and New Zealand that designs, builds and sustains assets, infrastructure, and facilities.
Characterised as having a diverse, geographically dispersed and often site-based workforce, Downer’s service lines include Transport, Utilities, Facilities, Asset Services and Defence.
In the oil and gas space, Downer provides maintenance, shutdown, turnaround and outage services, and end-to-end asset management services for customers in Coal Seam Gas and Liquefied Natural Gas industry, as well as for terminals, refineries, and petrochemical plants.
Like many companies, Downer has their own incident reporting and investigation processes in place that enable them to identify and apply learning from incidents that occur within their own organisation. They also are acutely aware that other companies are having incidents that Downer could learn from, and vice-versa. But obtaining this type of information can be difficult, and so the opportunity to learn from other companies and other industries doesn’t always eventuate. This situation leaves companies with a nagging uncertainty about the safety controls they have in place - “are we missing something?”
Solution
As an outcome of some excellent work done by the CSG Drilling & Completions community in Queensland, in 2018 Safer Together introduced a new safety tool known as a Learning Event Bulletin. Learning Event Bulletins are a tool to enable everybody in our industry to learn from each other - to assist learning from unwanted events and/or threats in order to reduce the occurrence of High Potential Incidents.
The Bulletins are designed to encourage companies to approach unwanted events with a positive learning mindset, and to investigate, report and disseminate the lessons as ‘High Value Learning Events’ triggered by unwanted events/threats occurring, regardless of whether they are classified as a HiPo or not.
Learning Event Bulletins are issued by Safer Together with instructions on how to use them to derive the most value. When implemented properly, they are a powerful tool for promoting engagement, worker interaction and discussion.
Downer saw an opportunity to enhance their existing safety management processes by adopting and implementing Learning Event Bulletins, and the potential benefits these Bulletins could provide as a means of enabling industry-wide cross-pollination of important safety information.
Result
Information overload is a common problem for frontline workers in large organisations – so Downer focused on ensuring that any information their people received was relevant, timely and engaging.
Downer’s business is founded on the deeply held value of Zero Harm. This Zero Harm culture is built on leading and inspiring, managing risk, rethinking processes, applying lessons learnt, and adopting and adapting practices that aim to achieve zero work-related injuries and minimise environmental harm.
The Learning Event Bulletins were integrated into Downer’s Zero Harm internal communications program. Every Wednesday, a company-wide Zero Harm Leadership Meeting is held where any new important safety information, initiatives or innovations from a particular industry sector are introduced into the room for consideration. Whenever Safer Together issues a Learning Event Bulletin, if it is viewed as being relevant to some aspect of Downer’s business activities, the Bulletin is shared at the meeting for the group to decide if it’s something that is worth communicating within the broader organisation. If it is, the group also decides which target audiences it should be cascaded to, and how the conversation should be framed for each audience to address their particular unique circumstances and safety experiences.
Any Learning Event Bulletins that are selected at the meeting on Wednesday for wider distribution are communicated to key focal points of the relevant target audiences at a subsequent Zero Harm Communications Meeting held every Friday.
This process ensures that a Learning Event Bulletin about an incident in the oil and gas industry may end up being shared with a wide range of other industry sectors related to Downer’s other service lines (e.g. Transport, Facilities or Defence).
Deployment of the Learning Event Bulletins is focused on recognising that there would be little value in simply pinning them up as a sheet of paper on the site’s Safety Noticeboards. The real value is in using them to generate proactive workforce engagement and an open dialogue among the people who work on site.
Emphasis is placed in discussions with frontline workers prompted by questions targeted at “Could this happen to you?” These questions are aimed at promoting discussion about:
- Do we have any similar activities/hazards at our worksite? Promoting thinking about and identification of similar activities or hazards
- How do we manage these hazards? Promoting thinking about improving hazard controls – or reinforcing the application of the controls that are identified in the discussion – i.e. if these controls fail, the Learning Event Bulletin describes the potential outcomes/consequences.
Downer uses a wide range of different communication channels to ensure that the key safety messages arising from each Learn Event Bulletin are effectively received and clearly understood by the target audiences. These channels include:
- Engagement and powerful operational pre-start meetings, obtaining feedback on how it relates to the audience’s working tasks, and highlighting hazards ensuring mitigation of incidents and injuries
- Engagement sessions at Toolbox Sessions
- Engagement sessions at Safety Stand Down sessions
- Placard on site HSE Noticeboards as key reminders
- Direct email distribution lists.
Learning Event Bulletins have been well received by Downer’s line managers, site supervisors and frontline work crews alike because they can see for themselves the benefits:
“I find whilst presenting the Learning Event Bulletins I receive increased crew engagement, questions and sharing of similar events the crew have been involved in” (Electrical Supervisor)
“Learning Event Bulletins help us find a better and safer way of doing things on the tasks we perform” (Project Lead)
“The information is always pertinent and precise. Regular updates of relevant safety issues and the alerts make for robust discussion amongst the workers” (Zero Harm Advisor)
Downer’s observations from their deployment journey to date with Learning Event Bulletins is that genuine engagement and communication can foster behavioural change. Taking the time to develop and implement a tailored communication approach has revealed the following positive outcomes:
- Safer Together – a greater awareness among the workforce of safety issues in the Oil and Gas sector that has broadened their knowledge based on the experiences of others, resulting in a more proactive approach and a noticeable shift in behaviour, as well as more open communication.
- More Efficient Together – the content, structure and format of the Bulletins makes them easy to deploy without the need to make any modifications. They also help embed a more consistent approach to safety engagement due to ongoing coaching and monitoring.
- Continually Improving Together – the cross-pollination from other companies in the same industry and the shared learning this generates (sometimes even across other industries), is a major contribution to Downer’s continual improvement journey.
Lessons Learnt
Prepare Your Audience – before launching into a conversation about a specific incident event, provide context by explaining why the Learning Event Bulletins are a powerful safety tool, where they come from and how they will be of benefit.
It’s The Conversation That’s Key – the aim is to get the audience engaged in a two-way dialogue, not just with the person that is facilitating the conversation but also with each other. One-way delivery by merely “telling” people about an incident is pointless, but everyone in the group “talking” about it together is powerful.
Engagement First, Then The Document – start by thinking through what the most impactful safety messaging for your audiences will be, to ensure you create genuine engagement when you subsequently have the safety conversation with them about the incident. Distribute the Bulletin document only after you’ve had the conversation, as a means of reinforcing the learning points that were discussed.
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For more information about Learning Event Bulletins click here.