Each new year is an opportunity to improve on the year before. And when it comes to the Brandenburg Enterprise Risk Management (ERM), the team took full advantage of that opportunity. Looking back on 2023, we learned a lot, and applied previous learnings from the year to achieve even more — like reducing our overdue safety action items to zero.

As one of our site's most important metrics, overdue safety action items represent the specific tasks that were left unaddressed at the end of each month.

“Coming into 2023, we were averaging around 20-30 overdue action items at the end of the month, and we were determined to get that number down” Gary Poole, HSE Manager, shared. “We conducted a deep dive of the process to discover a lot of redundant questions, regarding updating SAP, lockout tagout sheets, changing personnel, etc., as a result of poor tracking. Our existing system was set up to guide users through our processes, but it lacked transparency into what everyone was doing individually. So actions were being added more than once.”

The first step was bringing that transparency to the system. The team added the most common questions in the process to each record with three response tabs to choose from: “Yes,” “No,” and “N/A.” So as team members did their reviews, they could check the status of each action and know which already exist and what still needs to be done.

“By restructuring our dashboards, we could now show and track the items daily,” Tom Parcell, Operations Manager, shared. “We also held weekly meetings to reiterate where we are, what we need to do, and who’s accountable. This allowed us to not only look into actions already overdue, but also start taking a more proactive approach to upcoming overdue items. We can now have open conversations and offer ways we can help tackle these items together before they become overdue. Whether it’s additional resources or investments, our management team makes sure everyone knows they have support, and we can rely on each other to get the tasks done.”

That also included coaching regarding how to delegate actions and share the workload so each team member could take advantage of collective resources.

“We created a culture of collaboration and support that elevated our standards for individual performance,” Wendell Borges, Site Leader, explained. “We’ve made the targets visible and the goals clear, so everyone is aligned on what needs to be done and wants to do better not just for themselves, but also for each other.”

With an initial goal of no more than five overdue action items per month, the bar only continued to be set higher — by the second half of the year, the team was consistently under three. By the end of 2023, the team was recording zero overdue action items regularly.

“Starting the year, three overdue action items would have been something we celebrated,” Gary added. “Now, we’re not content until there isn’t a single item on the list. And we’re only going to continue to improve the ways we ensure that happens. We’re having more discussions on how to refine our dashboard even further and break down these safety actions into critical and non-critical for more clarity. It’s been a game-changer having the support of our upper management teams, and we’re just getting started.”