Client Success Stories
We welcome the opportunity to highlight some of our clients' successful results. Each client has specific challenges that are unique to their organization, yet the goal of safety excellence is shared by all.
Air Products & Chemicals
The SRI Group, Inc. has enjoyed a twenty-plus year relationship with Air Products and Chemicals, dating back to 1979. Our work began in Pasadena, TX and focused on the Structured Safety Process (SSP). The project garnered enormous success and over the next five years the SSP was implemented in all other plants within the chemicals division. The SSP helped Air Products & Chemicals (APC) achieve substantial results and best-in-class performance. In 2003, APC achieved the American Chemistry Council’s #1 safest company award, and have consistently ranked as a top performer since.
SRI developed a number of innovative technologies at APC including Accident Projection Techniques (APTs,) an employee-based observation process which allows employees to question and test the work environment routinely. Air Products & Chemicals believes the Structured Safety Process, known as the Basic Safety Process in their facilities, has been the backbone of their safety improvement program for almost three decades.
Albermarle
The SRI Group helped Albermarle’s Magnolia, AR facility and their Pasadena, TX facility reduce their Recordable Rate by more than 80% in the mid-1980’s. This exemplary performance was sustained for more than a decade.
Amerada Hess
When Amerada Hess wanted to focus their safety improvement efforts on supervisory and employee ownership, they turned to the Structured Safety Process. The results yielded more than a 75% reduction in recoradibility in the first year of implementing the process.
BASF
Our work with BASF began in 1978 with numerous safety leadership training projects and the development of safety-related audio visual packages. In 1979, BASF adopted the Structured Safety Process known as the Seven Element Process. For more than 20 years, the Seven Element Process has helped BASF maintain a top five position in safety within the American Chemistry Council.
Chevron Philips
Our work with Chevron Phillips started through the Phillips arm of the company at facilities in the Pasedena Plastics Complex, Puerto Rico, and Borger and thier facilities known as Drilling Specialties.
The Pasadena, TX facility saw an 80% reduction in recordable rates in the first two years. Seeing a need to add structure to various personell aspects of thier safety effort, they decided to implement the Structured Safety Process (SSP.) The effort stimulated enormous employee involvement and gained critical support from labor leadership. Both the Borger site and the Drilling Specialities division also enjoyed an 80% reduction in Recordability and have gone on to achieve VPP Star Status. The SRI Group also helped Drilling Specialities with a number of extra projects, including Emergency Response, development of SOP and operator training and advanced incident investigation and hazard recognition training.
American Re-Fuel
American Re-Fuel, a joint venture between Air Products and Chemicals and Browning Ferris Industries, thought thier safety performance wasn’t what it was supposed to be considering that one of their partners, APC had far better injury rates. Since Air Products was so successful with their Structured Safety Process they recommended the process to American Re-Fuel to help them achieve the fundamental structure that was lacking from their safety effort. The SSP was chartered in four Northeastern sites in the late 1990s. This resulted in the immediate reduction of recordable rates and today all American Re-Fuel sites have attained VPP star status.
Hughes Christensen
In 1999, Baker Hughes started a new charter location under the name of Hughes Christensen in The Woodlands, TX. This was a pilot facility in a number of ways. The company had adopted a program of self directed work teams. Much of the self directed effort was working in terms of the production and manufacturing effort, but the safety performance was nowhere near where it needed to be.
Working collaboratively with Hughes Christensen, we were able to develop a Structured Safety Process which empowered employees to execute many of the aspects necessary to ensure safety excellence. Over the next year of implementation, Hughes Christensen saw better numbers and the facility consistently runs a 0.3 recordable rate or better. The Structured Safety Process spread to their facilities in Venezuela and Louisiana, yielding the same results.
Bayer
SRI’s work with the Bayer Corporation began in 1997 in a facility in New Martinsville, WV. They had a recordable rate that was three times the corporate average, roughly 4.5. They wanted the SRI Group to make a difference and reduce their numbers, increase supervisory involvement and get employees far more involved in the process. The SRI implemented the Structured Safety Process and within 18 months the New Martinsville plant had a 50% reduction in recordability with further improvements over the next three years.
The SSP then spread throughout various Bayer locations, including the West Haven pharmaceutical site, where they saw dramatic reductions in employee injuries. We then engaged and involved the large research staff that Bayer had at the time. The project was also used in Bushy Park, SC in a multi-unit facility that contained various owners, 1500 researches and over 1000 sales personnel distributed throughout the Continental US
Clariant
Clariant Plant in North Carolina had done work with a leading BBS consulting firm in regards to behavioral observations but have not received the results or reduction they were looking for and had not achieved an acceptable level of employee involvement or commitment. The SRI Group focused hard on increasing the tools and activities the employees would use to develop and promote safe behaviors. We added additional observation technologies, and helped to define roles and responsibilities for every person at every level in the facility. Soon the plant achieved absolutely stellar recordable rates, many years they achieved a 0 recordable rate.
Ethyl
At the time we began work with Ethyl Corp’s Baton Rouge Tetraethyl Lead Facility, they had a recordable rate well over 4. Within three years, the 3000 person facility had dropped to 0.8. We implemented the SSP, led supervisory and leadership skills training around incident investigation and hazard recognition and helped them through a significant downsizing all along keeping them injury free through those times.
Gencorp
At a discreet manufacturing facility in Missouri, Gencorp had very limited safety systems and very substantial injury rates. In the first year, Gencorp saw a 50% reduction in recordability, and a radical restructuring of the organization’s safety effort which dropped the recordable rates to sub-one levels.
Honeywell
In 2004, Honeywell implemented the Structured Safety Process in 34 facilities worldwide and across five different business groups. The focus of this massive effort was to define roles, responsibilities and accountabilities for all levels of the organization. At the time we began the Honeywell recordable rate was 1.47. By the end of 2006 it had dropped to 0.63 . After training and implementation and installing a train-the-trainer program, the SSP was then launched in all of Honeywell’s UOP sites.
Marathon
SRI has done highly successful work in five Marathon Refining operations. At the Robinson facility injury rates had risen to the point where they were in jeopardy of losing their VPP star status. SRI armed them with additional safety technologies, added organizational structure and trained everyone in the process. Within months, they began to see substantial reduction in injury rates reductions. They were able to keep their VPP status and now maintain a sub 1.0 recordable rate.
The project spread to the Catlettsburg refinery in 2001. Catlettsburg had an extraordinary successful implementation of SSP and has won numerous NPRA awards for best-in-class safety performance. The Catlettsburg SSP project is notable for the level of involvement and commitment the Structured Safety Process achieved at the labor level. All employees and first line supervisors. They also use the data the process generates for continuous improvement .
SSP has also been implemented at the Detroit and Canton refinery.
North American Pipe Company (NAPCO)
North American Pipe Co. is a pipe manufacturing company throughout North America and Canada. At the time of SSP implementation, NAPCO was running recordable rates well in excess of industry averages. Some facilities reported between a 10 and 12 recordable rate, some as high as 14. In a phased implementation of SSP across all sites, they have seen a cut in recordable injury by almost 90%. NAPCO is now an industry leader.
Olmsted Machine Works
Olmsted Machine Works was our first client. They consisted of four small manufacturing sites throughout Texas and the Louisiana gulf cost area. When the project began Olmsted had a recordable injury rate of 107.3 . In the first two years they reduced their IR to an average of 1.8 and continued to decline over the next six years.
Schenectady International
Schenectady International is a small chemical manufacturer in Freeport, TX which adopted a self directed work effort and was struggling with their safety effort. In regards to safety accountability and responsibility they had substantial gaps in the safety process. Since implementing the Structured Safety Process and working with the Sri Group the facility has not had a recordable in almost a decade and is in the process of obtaining OSHA VPP Star status.
Shell
The Shell Wood River facility recordable rate was a 16.1. The organization was plague by a culture of poor performance and accountability for safety. They desperately needed to add structure. SRI helped them to redesign how work was done. Through our work with their organizational effectiveness group, they developed robust system and an approach to work which ensured that the organization’s goals were met above and beyond the SSP. The process was a phased rollout across the 1600 person facility refinery.
Some of our most valuable safety tools and programs were prototyped at this facility. Over six years, their recordable incident rate went from a 16 to a 0.8 which they maintained for more than decade. We then added an environmental component to the SSP and in 1990 they won Shell’s environmental excellence award. Eventually reliability and quality were added to the process dramatically improving the Woodriver’s overall manufacturing position with in the Shell organization.
We then also worked with the fuels group. Within fuels we focused on supervisory accountability and employee participation. Their 5.0 IRR dropped to a 1 over the next 18 months and then stabilized below that one year later.
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- Air Products and Chemicals, Albermarle, BASF, Chevron Philips, American Ref-Fuel, Hughes Christensen, Bayer, Clariant, Ethyl, Gencorp, Honeywell, Marathon, North American Pipe Company, Olmsted Machine Works, Shell