Safety Must Be Top Corporate Priority, Bahrain Petroleum, Bechtel, Bell Helicopter, Dupont Executives Tell ASSE at Conference

6/13/2004

From: Diane Hurns of American Society of Safety Engineers, 847-768-3413 or dhurns@asse.org; Web: http://www.asse.org

DES PLAINES, Ill., June 13 -- Keep raising the bar, get involved in mentoring and mentor up, market yourself and safety within the company, and just do it, was some of the advice corporate leaders gave occupational safety, health and environmental professionals during the "Executive Summit on Safety" at the annual American Society of Safety Engineers' (ASSE) conference in Las Vegas June 10.

Close to 3000 conference attendees gathered to hear Bechtel Group, Inc.'s Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Riley P. Bechtel, Bell Helicopter -- a Textron Company's Chairman Emeritus John R. Murphey, E.I. DuPont de Nemours & Company, Inc.'s Vice President of Safety, Health and Environment Paul V. Tebo, and Bahrain Petroleum Company's Chief Executive Hussain Tadayon discuss the role safety, the safety professional and management play in their organizations when it comes to protecting workers.

When asked by moderator and ASSE member Tom Cecich on how safety professionals can be more effective within their company or organization each panelist provided their own insight.

Tadayon said safety professionals must market themselves within the company, maintain their knowledge base and keep learning. "They should not wait to be asked but be there with answers, be creative and they must know and understand their company's needs," he said. "When it comes to quantifying the benefits of safety we must look at the level of risk, probability, the costs and the benefits. We need guidance from ASSE to be able to translate intangibles into tangibles, that is a hard thing to do."

Dupont's Tebo told the audience, "Keep safety visible. We put up a traffic light in our offices. When a tragedy occurs, the red light goes on and we all immediately discuss the incident and how we can prevent it from happening again. We need to keep it personal. This is not just about statistics; it's about people -- people getting hurt. You need to keep reminding people that workplace safety is getting better, but don't communicate through statistics, again keep it personal."

Bechtel, responding to what advice he would give safety professionals noted, "Perceived workplace safety problems due to different cultures around the world is just not true. They can be addressed and solutions found. For instance, at a project in Croatia we had major safety problems there at first and realized that the workers were coming to work inebriated. We found that their culture allowed for drinking beer and eating bread in the morning before work. Well, we changed that, especially in light of the fact that it was for their safety as well. We instituted rules and drug testing and in no time, the workplace culture changed. We had severely reduced the number of accidents to about zero.

"In most companies you have the profit and loss responsibilities if run like a basic matrix company. However, my advice is this - remember how you grew up," Bechtel continued. "There were things you would tell one parent, things you would tell another parent and things you would tell both parents. Or you just did it before telling your parents. Like when you were growing up, as long as you are doing the right thing, just do it. Then tell management. If it is the right thing it will work out."

Murphey suggested becoming part of a mentoring program where a safety professional is mentored by a company officer and also suggested mentoring up. As for a company's safety culture, the panelists agreed that everyone should be accountable for safety and that senior management must value safety and advocate it throughout the company.

"We have safety walkabouts for top management," Bell's Murphey said. "Our leadership team is also measured by the company's safety results and they are tied to management's compensation packages."

"We report on our safety efforts at our quarterly board meetings, we work with the trade unions on safety initiatives and we also have walkabouts," Tadayon said. "When a major safety milestone occurs, the company chairman immediately sends a congratulatory letter."

"I can best illustrate the need for a focus on safety and its return on investment from this story," Tebo said. "In 1997 one of our plants had a small fire. Noone was injured, but because of that fire, the plant was closed down for three months. We were oversold and to meet our customer's needs we had to invite our competitors to fill those orders. Needless to say, by doing this we eventually lost some of our business to our competitors. This one little fire, that could have been prevented, cost us around $30 million."

Tebo has championed the DuPont "the Goal is 0" approach to environmental stewardship and is responsible for integrating safety, health and environmental excellence as a core business strategy.

"There is no silver bullet. (Zero) is the only place to be, but there must be an unwavering commitment from management. It is hard for safety professionals when nothing goes wrong to communicate the return on investment when discussing budgeting and strategy," Tebo said. "It's similar to when Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge goes before Congress to request more resourceswhen nothing has happened. We need to find a way to articulate the effectiveness of our efforts." In Ridge's case, that no foreigners have flown airplanes into buildings in the U.S. since 9/11.

"Safety is one of our core values. It's good to work with customers that share that value. We don't work with a customer that doesn't share that value, that does not have the same level of safety commitment," Bechtel said. "And safety should not be pushed down the priority list because nothing happened."

As for corporate management's commitment to safety, Murphey added, "We need to walk the talk, show that responsibility lies at the management level and to let the whole organization know consistently that this is a priority and part of their responsibility as well."

Murphey also noted that safety professionals should not take cutbacks personally. "Many times when there is a reduction in the workforce, it is usually across the board including all departments -- from marketing to accounting to IT to safety."

The transcript for the one-hour panel discussion, a first for ASSE, will soon be available through ASSE by contacting customerservice@asse.org or checking the Web site at: http://www.asse.org.

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Founded in 1911, the Des Plaines, Ill.-based ASSE is the largest and oldest professional safety organization and has more than 30,000 occupational safety, health and environmental professional members who manage, supervise, research and consult on safety, health, transportation and environmental issues in all industries, government, labor and education. Its Las Vegas Professional Development Conference held from June 7-10 in Las Vegas was the largest ever, with 3800 attendees.