February 10, 2011

RE: BP/UIS Carson visit-2/1-2/3/11

The following are items noted/logged during our trip that may or may not be pursued here.

  • OSCAR- “Outstanding Safety Contractor Annual Recognition”- is an award given to one (1) contractor yearly based on certain criteria (see attached).
  • Ambassador Program- similar to what we are doing with our Mentoring Program. They are sending us information about their program.
  • Safety Engineers- they have 5- one for each area of the refinery.
  • Fire Marshals- there are 6 of these. They do the actual gas testing instead of operators.
  • Monthly gate handouts- called “Grip & Grins” are passed out the first Monday of each month at 5:30am by members.
  • Audits- they have weekly “safety walks” that visit an area of the refinery. They also “adopt” an area within the refinery(out of process areas) and clean these up on a scheduled basis.
  • General meetings- are held the third Wednesday every month outside the refinery in a building which also houses BP Safety Training. There are 140 contractor companies that are working in this refinery. They only have 50-60 that participate on a regular basis.
  • We visited during their “steering committee” meeting which is the group that decides on the agenda items for their next general meeting.
  • They do not charge member companies dues and do not seem to get a lot of financial support from BP.
  • Their council does not currently have a Near Miss program but are planning an incentive based program sometime in the near future.
  • Occasionally, they set up driving check points within the refinery to check for seat belts/speeding/cell phones, etc. These are manned by both contractors and BP so they will stop all drivers. If no violations are noted, the occupants receive a bottled water. Violators (even if in the same car) receive nothing
  • They stated that it is in everyone’s contract that they must participate in the contractors safety group, but did not state how they police it.
  • Their council has a Facebook page as opposed to a website like we do. They were shocked to discover how little the website costs.
  • A monthly calendar is published and passed out to all members
  • They asked questions about how we did things and seemed to be impressed with what we do. They also expressed an interest in visiting here sometime and we told them they would be welcome anytime.