Safety Culture and Intervention Study

Problem Statement:  As an industry, interstate pipeline construction faces serious cultural and systems barriers to high performance occupational safety.  A huge influx of new front line staff and supervision with low “safety literacy”, inconsistent control strategies, pockets of dated compliance-based approaches magnifying the competition between safety and productivity, and compromises in balancing environmental and safety interests are but a few examples of these challenges.  Many of the interventions to these challenges cannot be fully realized by individual stakeholders (e.g. owners, contractors, and associations).

How do we overcome the challenges to achieving “zero” safety related incidents, and in particular, fatalities on pipeline construction projects?  Should we just tell our people what to do, as in a command and control model, or do we care enough to give people the knowledge and tools for individuals to make effective decisions?  Can we expect any improvement in our industries safety performances when individual industry stakeholders (i.e. owners, contractors, and associations) are working on uncoordinated agendas?

Perhaps the first step to improve safety in construction is for pipeline owner / operator companies to work interdependently with pipeline contractors to establish safety excellence.  The key to improved contractor safety performance is a change in attitude and behavior from the pipeline owner / operator companies.  Pipeline owners / operator companies need to define the culture of the industry and set out a consistent set of simple principles that articulate that culture.  Further, if the owners could agree on processes and procedures, a consistency would develop for the contractors as they move across various owners.

Proposed Effort:  This study will have three major deliverables as follows:
1. Identification of principles or attributes of the “safety culture” for our industry (i.e. key success factors) that pipeline owner / operators desire and that all INGAA Foundation member companies support.
2. Development of a report that identifies prioritized list of specific occupational “safety interventions” that no one industry stakeholder can advance effectively alone in the area of onshore pipeline construction.  For example, interventions such as standardization of a set of safety guidelines such as created by Australian Pipeline Industry Association, a uniform front line staff and supervisory training program as created by the Canadian Construction Sector Council, or a program to lobby the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) for wider rights-of-way for large diameter pipeline construction projects.
3. Recommendations on how to implement and sustain industry-wide safety interventions that are identified in the report, and subsequently.

The study will be facilitated and conducted by a consultant with world-wide knowledge of best practice safety culture and best practice safety procedures / interventions.  The consultant will be chosen through an RFP process from at least three qualified firms.

Item 1 – The consultant will be asked to develop a list of principles or key success factors that describe the safety culture of the interstate gas pipeline industry.  These principles will be tested with owner / operator companies to establish a consensus view of desired safety culture in the industry, including pipeline construction.  These principles will serve as one of the inputs into establishing the report on specific safety interventions.

Item 2 – Content of the report will be developed from research and from input obtained from Foundation members via a two-day workshop that brings together senior safety and operational leadership of pipeline operators, pipeline construction contractors (union and merit-based), and contractor and owner associations.  Safety professionals from the most influential members of the Foundation will assist the consultant in organizing the workshop.