In this post, Rhonda Harrell, ProcessBarron’s EHS Director, describes how teamwork at every level is critical to ensuring safety when industrial and manufacturing facilities work with field service partners like ProcessBarron.
At Process Barron, safety is more than a priority. It’s a core value. This core value guides everything we do internally and our relationships with the clients who trust us to work in their facilities.
We take a proactive approach to safety and planning the details to ensure safety speaks commitment to the quality of everything we do.
We focus on teamwork at every level to ensure not only our employees’ safety but also those whom we work with and around.
Choosing Your Team
Our clients need to know we will be a reliable partner as our teams work alongside each other, so they use 3rd-party vetting platforms like ISN and Avetta to ensure the contractors they bring into their facility have a good safety track record. These companies are like scouts who look at everything we do from a safety perspective to ensure we have what it takes to be part of the team. We go through a rigorous process to update our safety protocols every year. We have checkpoints throughout the year where they audit our safety manual, safety documentation, and our overall numbers related to our Experience Modification Rating (EMR).
Safety is a core value at ProcessBarron and essential to our business success.
Planning For Safety
Good teams have a good game plan, so planning is critical to creating a team that can ensure safety. It’s not enough for a client to say, “This is the space you can work in.” Safety requires a comprehensive plan. Our most successful clients have a thorough process for planning each project. They might use different terminology, but these plans are often called a Contractor Health and Safety Plan (HASP) or an Environmental Health and Safety (EHS) work plan.
A good HASP or EHS work plan includes a comprehensive job safety analysis and a communication plan that details how our teams will communicate before we arrive on the job site and after the project starts.
- An emergency preparedness plan
- Project contacts
- The number of people on site
- Project scope
- Any potential hazards and how to mitigate them.
Along with a commitment to rigorous lockout tag-out compliance, these provide a clear understanding of the overall project and a roadmap for what needs to be communicated to who if anything changes. They don’t just say, “Here’s your work area,” and hand the project to our leadership.
Partnering with clients to understand safety protocols beyond those of ProcessBarron allows our team to have the playbook they need to communicate and coordinate.
Training Our Team for Safety
We put a lot of resources into preparing our team for safety. We never forget that it only takes a lapse from one person to jeopardize everyone’s safety, so we create a culture of “say something if you see something.” We value team members who will speak up when safety issues arise. We get projects done on time and within budget, but we don’t do that by ignoring safety concerns. And that means everyone must be thoroughly trained to act safely and recognize potential safety hazards.
We host annual training and periodic classes for our entire field services team. Every employee in field services must have an OSHA 10 Construction Industry certification before being placed on a project. We also provide an updated OSHA 10 Certification every three years. We train our team to be certified for Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) requirements and provide an annual MSHA refresher.
We do this as part of our commitment to safety, to ensure our clients trust us as partners to deliver superior performance from both a safety and quality perspective. Our focus on safety creates a culture in which our employees not only have the knowledge and skills but also the trust and assurance on which good teams are built.
Safety-Focused Teamwork with ProcessBarron
Contact us to learn more about how ProcessBarron can partner with you to improve industrial efficiency while ensuring the safety of everyone involved.