Every safety incident is an opportunity to learn. When the Kallo team experienced some LOPCs earlier this year, they not only worked together to identify learnings from those specific incidents, but also took tangible actions to strengthen safety practices across the site.

One of the Kallo team’s most impactful efforts was the start of a manager/operator “buddy” program for their regular site inspection tours.

“We’ve welcomed some new faces on our management team in recent history,” said Manu Gyselinck, Site Manager. “So a big driver of this ‘pairing’ on site tours was to allow our leaders to learn more about the many details of our different production units directly from the operations team.”

Another big driver for the program related directly to the challenges of the pandemic.

“Because of COVID, we haven’t had as many opportunities to connect with each other,” said Gretel Sandrap, Safety & Health Manager. “And we all know that when people are together, there are more chances to chat through ideas, including safety enhancements.”

Kallo used this new “buddy” system for a range of inspection tours that take place throughout the week, including:

• Sampling tours, where operators collect and test samples every three hours for each column in production
• Energy tours, which cover boilers, incinerators, oil ovens, and everything else having to do with energy
• Tankfarm tours – the biggest tours – where the operator walks around the whole site and looks for issues, such as possible leakages and pump issues

The Kallo site began the management-operator pairings on these tours at the end of February, and since then, they have enjoyed many benefits from the new program.

“Operators have more access to the management team, and vice versa,” said Manu. “We’ve also been able to standardize our tours. We learned that each operator was looking at different things, and this bringing together of our experience has allowed us to be more comprehensive as a team on all of our inspection tours.”

“A second set of eyes is always a good thing,” added Gretel. “We’ve taken many great actions from the tour findings, and with every improvement, we keep our team safer. And since this program has also helped bring us closer together for a very worthy use of our time, it’s definitely been a win-win for everyone involved!”