Consultant Experience.
Safety Culture Transformation, Complex Operating Environment
Isabelle Courtney-Guy, Hendrik Oheim and Ines Courtney-Guy contributed to this engagement as part of a wider specialist team working through another consulting organisation, before EnCircle was established.
The situation.
A major turnaround at one of the world's largest and most complex operating environments. Running simultaneously, a significant capital transformation, new facilities under construction while operations continued without pause. At peak, over 2,000 people on site, fifteen-plus partner organisations, eleven languages spoken. A safety culture that, by the leaders' own honest assessment, needed real change.
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Running an operation this size safely is hard enough. This one also wanted its safety culture to change.
The challenge
40 confidential interviews before the work began. The findings were candid.
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"Our health and safety performance has not been good. A major step change is needed. We are not talking about what could happen. It has happened." — Senior Leader
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Safety performance rated 4 to 6 out of 10 by the client's own leaders. Workers reluctant to report near misses. Toolbox Talks reduced to compliance rituals. Alongside it, genuine energy to change, in leaders and in the people doing the work.
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We built everything that followed on that willingness to change.
How the consulting team worked.
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Four threads ran through the work: safety people carry personally, one team across client and contractor lines, capability the client keeps, and a response to what was happening across the project.
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Safety people carry personally. We joined the conversations where safety was already being discussed, from toolbox talks to construction and daily execution meetings, and offered input and feedback as they matured.
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One team across client and contractor lines. We brought leaders from different areas and disciplines into the same conversations.
Capability the client keeps. We designed sessions and structures around each level, from senior leaders to the people doing the work, so the work carries on after we leave.
A response to what was happening across the project. We listened on site, in the offices and behind the scenes, and let what we heard shape the next step.
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The team was there across all ten weeks, on site and in the offices, coaching, listening and adjusting as the picture changed
What happened.
A pulse survey measured real improvement across the safety culture indicators the client cared about most. Across the ten-week turnaround period, zero Lost Time Injuries across roughly 96,000 exposure hours, and by the end, 102 consecutive days with no harm recorded.
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“I expected when we started this journey that we would see improvements on last year. What I am seeing as a change isn’t an improvement on last year. It’s a whole different picture. I am really happy.”
- Senior Leader, Major Operating Environment
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“Where the relationship is there, the care follows, and the performance follows.”
-Senior Leader, Major Operating Environment
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“A year ago, if [a manager] came, the guys would down tools and go for a smoke. Now they just carry on working.”
- Contractor Manager, Major Operating Environment
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The second turnaround that followed was also completed with zero Lost Time Injuries, carried by leaders and supervisors who had the vision of what was possible, and had been coached and trained the first time round.
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The standard held because leaders saw the value in it and kept working to keep it going, not because one round of training was ever going to be enough on its own.
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Prior consulting experience: Isabelle Courtney-Guy served as lead principal, Hendrik Oheim as senior consultant and Ines Courtney-Guy as co-ordinator & consultant support. The engagement was delivered through another consulting organisation as part of a wider specialist team.
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