Can an Energy Company Achieve Sustainability Objectives?

April 26th, 2007

The stereotyped view of large energy companies includes nothing about sustainability, corporate social responsibility, or concern for the environment. But actually, when you do business with as many energy companies as we do, the stereotype quickly disappears. Many of these companies have led the charge to deploy EH&S information management platforms like ours. And what we sell is a product that helps companies achieve operational excellence.

Operational excellence is a goal well beyond mere compliance. It’s proactive, where compliance is merely reactive.

While on the road in Asia and Australia this month, I’ve read a unique document: Chevron’s Operational Excellence Manual. Yes, Chevron has at least one manual for its Operational Excellence Management System (OEMS). This system is shared with employees to set the company culture. Chevron’s operations are spread across the globe, and the OEMS allows the company to identify and close performance gaps quickly.

In the words of Chevron’s CEO, operational excellence is not something separate from its business. It is the way they run their business to provide value to the shareholders. To me, this view is the wave of the future, as you know from previous posts here.

Chevron has developed an entire systems approach to operational excellence, which they try to integrate into their daily operations to protect people and the environment today and in the future.

The system begins with operational excellence objectives:

• Achieve an injury-free work place.
• Eliminate spills and environmental incidents.
• Identify and mitigate key environmental risks.
• Promote a healthy workplace and mitigate significant health risks.
• Operate incident-free with industry-leading asset reliability.
• Maximize the efficient use of resources and assets.

Chevron’s vision is “to be recognized and admired by industry and the communities in which we operate as world-class in safety, health, environment, reliability and efficiency.”

To achieve this, Chevron counts on its leadership to set the pace. And here’s what the company says a leader can do to build a culture of operational excellence.

1. Engage in dialogue with members of the workforce (employees and contractors); inquire about their work and working conditions. Understand and recognize the value of each individual’s contribution to incident-free operations.
2. Positively reinforce safe behaviors on the spot. Act immediately to mitigate unsafe or environmentally unsound conditions. Share personal examples of safety learnings and observations from both on and off-the-job.
3. Never ignore a suggestion to improve operations.
4. Devote required resources, including your time, to operational excellence. Know your OE network representatives and participate in OE network activities.
5. Sponsor and participate in critical OE processes; make safety observations, participate in a Job Safety Analysis (JSA) or an incident investigation to determine root causes.
6. Set clear, specific, measurable objectives for operational excellence. Communicate frequently with all members of the workforce on the objectives, measures, plans and progress. Regularly recognize progress on indicators and achievement of results.
7. Role model Tenets of Operation by always following tenets, holding others accountable for following tenets and recognizing those that do.
8. Conduct field visits, ask questions about safety, environmental and reliability conditions and provide immediate pin-pointed feedback (both positive and constructive).
9. Hold yourself and others accountable for operational excellence performance. Include OE performance in ranking, salary and job selections.
10. Set high, specific standards for continuous improvement of critical OE processes. Share lessons learned and seek out and adopt processes that could improve performance.

There is much to admire in Chevron’s commitment. Expect to hear more about this from me in the future.

Tags: chevron corporate social responsibility energy companies operational excellence sustainability

Entry Filed under: Operational Risk Management, Sustainability