 |
Safety and health management
Our employees are our most valuable resource and are at the core of ExxonMobil's achievements. We invest in the safety, health, development, and training of our workforce to ensure that we attract and retain the most capable individuals.
Safety and health management
ExxonMobil is committed to conducting business in a manner that protects and promotes the safety and health of our employees, those involved with our operations, and the communities where we work. These commitments are documented in our safety, health, and product safety policies and security expectations, which are implemented through our Operations Integrity Management System
(OIMS) framework. To drive continuous improvement, OIMS is periodically updated. The latest revision, completed in 2009, includes strengthened expectations with respect to leadership, process safety, and assessments of OIMS effectiveness. As countries have varying standards for safety and health, our expectation is that we operate either to our own standards or those of the local country, whichever are most stringent.
Workforce safety
In 2009, we recorded best-ever combined employee and contractor workforce lost-time incident rates. Since 2005, we have reduced our workforce lost-time incident rate by an average of 11 percent per year and 23 percent since 2008. Incident investigation and analysis revealed that employee awareness of potential hazards as well as the degree to which they comply with critical procedures are often significant contributors to accident prevention. As a result, we are concentrating on the deployment and enhancement of behavior-based safety tools and are promoting the development of a “culture of intervention” where everyone takes responsibility for their own safety and the safety of others. We are also emphasizing conformance with critical operating procedures.
View chart: Lost-Time Incident Rate
We continue to focus on improving the safety performance of our contractors. A key factor contributing to the risk of injury for contractors is that they can be less experienced or “short-service” workers. Pre-job planning tools, training, mentoring, and short-service worker programs contributed to our improved 2009 performance.
We are saddened to report that we experienced eight worker fatalities in 2009. We have thoroughly investigated all causes and contributing factors associated with each incident to learn from them and to prevent similar events. For example, a landscaping contractor was fatally injured while removing a fallen tree limb when he touched a utility pole guy wire, which was inadvertently in contact with a live wire. After investigating, a number of corrective actions were taken, including enhancing protocols for contractors in identifying and mitigating hazards, conducting a safety stand-down for all relevant workers, and issuing a global alert to raise awareness about electrical safety. At the close of 2009, a global “Safety Time-Out” was conducted for all ExxonMobil workers in an effort to underscore the risks inherent in our day-to-day activities, to emphasize the importance of hazard recognition and awareness, and to reinforce the role everyone plays in the prevention of incidents in the workplace. We will not be satisfied until we have workplaces in which Nobody Gets Hurt.
View chart: Total Recordable Incident Rate
To help achieve our vision, our employees and contractors receive rigorous training before commencing work in our facilities. They participate in safety teams, conduct safety observations, and suggest ongoing improvements to procedures. For example, in 2009, more than 1900 contractor supervisors and managers participated in ExxonMobil Development Company’s safety leadership workshops, an increase of more than 20 percent since 2008.
Workplace security
At ExxonMobil, Security is Everybody’s Business and we provide security and safeguards to protect our people, operations, facilities, business information, and other assets. In 2009, we continued to improve these programs and measures and further integrated them into our OIMS framework. Security is an ongoing activity at all our facilities, from production to large petrochemical and refining complexes; office buildings and computer systems; and transportation systems such as pipelines, rail, or marine vessels. We anticipate that efforts to strengthen security at our facilities will be complete in the first half of 2010. For more information about security at ExxonMobil.
Process safety
Our process safety management framework focuses on reducing risks and incidents through flawless execution of OIMS. Lessons learned from incidents in our own operations or in industry provide opportunities to enhance our facilities design, operations integrity management, and operating practices. The goal is to use a disciplined approach to consistently deliver exemplary performance in designing, operating, and maintaining our assets.
Up close:
Celebrating safe operations
In 2009, a number of our facilities celebrated significant safety milestones demonstrating that ExxonMobil's high standards for safety performance are achievable.
• Our Talco field in the United States celebrated 40 years of operations without a lost-time incident—the longest time in our operations in the United States. Among other factors, we attribute this accomplishment to an emphasis on people looking out for each other.
• The Fos-sur-Mer refinery in France surpassed 20 years without an employee lost-time incident.
• The Port Dickson refinery in Malaysia achieved five years without an employee or contractor recordable incident.
• Three U.S. Gulf Coast refineries (Baton Rouge, Baytown, and Beaumont) and the Dartmouth refinery in Canada all surpassed 10 million hours worked without an employee or contractor lost-time incident.
Up close:
Focus on process safety: Managing worker fatigue
Lessons from industry incidents play a major role in continuing to strengthen our operating management practices. The Chemical Safety Board investigation of another oil company's 2005 refinery incident in Texas City highlighted that worker fatigue could have been a contributing factor in the incident; and recommended the development of fatigue management guidelines for industry use.
At ExxonMobil, employees globally operate offshore production platforms, refineries, chemical plants, and marine vessels around the clock, and we recognize the potential risk that fatigue in the workplace can create. In response, we are enhancing our own programs while assisting other stakeholders and consultants in the development of an American National Standards Institute (ANSI) standard to improve fatigue-related safety in the petroleum and petrochemical industries.
The new ANSI standard outlines the elements of a comprehensive Fatigue Risk Management System (FRMS) and is designed for integration into existing safety management systems. The FRMS includes elements such as balancing workload and available staff, training employees and supervisors, enhancing alertness by modifying the work environment, assessing fitness for work, investigating incidents, and measuring system performance to ensure objectives are met.
OIMS includes many of these components and we are implementing a variety of initiatives to progress key elements. For example, training has been designed to provide employees with the knowledge and skills they need to maximize their alertness. Supervisors will receive supplemental training to help them identify and address signs of excess employee fatigue. We are investigating how best to enhance alertness by modifying lighting levels in control rooms while avoiding glare and computer monitor "washout." These initiatives are designed to enhance our strong safety performance and, through leadership in developing an ANSI standard, help the industry as a whole do the same.
