Managing Turnarounds, Shutdowns, and Outages

Looking for help with your Turnaround? You’ll love this episode of JMJ’s Safety Talks. 

Frank Engli is a mechanical engineer by training with over 37 years of experience operating shutdowns, turnarounds, and outages. He is currently the Projects, Maintenance and Turnaround Manager at Shell Canada's Sarnia Manufacturing Center.

In this engaging conversation with JMJ safety consultant Vikki Sanders, Frank discusses what he learned about safety leadership and the one piece of advice he would give someone who is managing a turnaround for the first time?

Frank recalls successfully teaming up with JMJ to create a safety culture based on “crafting a caring and collaborative approach at the construction site."

Transcript

spk_1:   0:00
welcome to safety talks. Power five. James Today's guest host, safety consultant Vicki Sanders interviews Frank Ingley. Projects Maintenance a turnaround manager at Shell Canada's Sarnia Manufacturing Center. So welcome, Frank. And so I'd really like to focus his conversations that beautiful to somebody that's about to embark on a turnaround and who may be looking for help. And so, really, let's start with your experience. You've been around a long time, worked in lots of plants, refineries of the other places. Could you tell me a bit about your background?

spk_0:   0:37
Yeah, I've been in the industry for around 37 years. Um, worse. I've worked at six different operating sites from nuclear industry refining chemicals plants on up graders. Um, most of them were across Canada. Um, my background is a mechanical engineer by training, and I have an M b A, but have been involved mostly with projects, maintenance and turnarounds in my career.

spk_1:   1:08
Fantastic. So it's really round these turnarounds that we kind of wanna have a conversation today, and I know you've had some really great achievements with turnarounds. Could you tell us a bit about? Specifically way you might talk about today, so I know you worked at Shell Scott Furred. You're now working at Shell. Sonya, could you just give us a little bit of background about the complexity of the work that you did? Both of those places that sets the scene for okay,

spk_0:   1:35
uh, shelter got offered is, uh, heavily. They're largely integrated. Site of a chemical plant refinery and, uh, oil sands upgrader. Um, it's turnarounds, and I joined Shell in 2011. They're what we classes mega turnarounds, a 1,000,000 hours, plus quite large in the industry. Very heavy, complex, high pressure equipment. And we were challenged back in 2011 that the safety in the past of our turnarounds were quite challenging. And we don't injured a lot of folks. And in 2012 we set out to look at how we could change that safety record and improve it, and we joined up with yourselves at J. M. J to focus on creating a caring and collaborative approach at the site. Since then, I've moved into 2017 to Sonya refinery, which is a 85,000 barrel a day refinery, and we were experiencing similar things here. Safety culture wasn't very strong at a lot of history of hurting people. Um, you know, medical report, our reporter, Bols. And we took a lot of the same benefits that we learned at Scott Furred and applying them here with great success.

spk_1:   3:00
Fantastic. If you could, um, if you could boil down the kind of what you focused on on to really kind of shift, vote those cultures and make that difference in safety. Is there anything that you could say about What is it? You know, kind of what the key aspects were that you started looking at.

spk_0:   3:21
So we try to change from history. Where at the site, we had a very, uh, talk down direct, follow the rules approach, um, and tried to turn it into a caring and collaborative culture on the site. We had a number of challenges. One was, uh, in the other market. At the time I was overheated and painting the necessary skill trades to execute her work was quite difficult. And there were people from all across countries and actually some foreign workers from the states and other parts of the world and vastly different cultures coming in to how we executed work and the experience that they had working in a bird after buying. So how do you take a workforce that shows up at your doorstep and to bring everybody back up to the same level of safety? Um, risk tolerance that you want, but also at the same time creating a culture where people I want to work together and really look after one another.

spk_1:   4:32
So what did that mean? Sounds awesome. And what did it end up looking like? So where you start, it's away. And what would that some of the shifts that occurred for you that you could actually kind of, I guess, quantifiable outcomes or things that you could see or feel.

spk_0:   4:49
Okay, what we started out with and working with, J. M J. Was really focusing on how to create that culture. One of the initiatives that we're doing at the same time was, ah, tripartite approach with Shell, our contractors and the labor force, the unions that represented the skilled trades, working together under a tri tri partite umbrella. To really look at how we can improve safety and what are the needs of all parties? One was really knocking down the barriers and changing the weight safety was approached from basically and imposed rule on everybody to trying to explain to them that thes rules and conditions that we do is there to actually save people's lives, protect him from getting hurt. And before these rules had occurred, people were getting a lot more heard. Or actually, fatalities occurred in the organization's, and the 2nd 1 was to look at it. Okay, how do we do this? Collaborate Lee, working together where everybody feels they can, uh, look out for one another, can intervene with one another and at the same time take that intervention that somebody may d'oh, Witham and accepted as a gift that somebody is looking out for you? Yes, that culture. So that you know I'm not their toe pull your chain. I'm there to help and receive that truly with respect. Um, And when you start working towards that, where people are willing to intervene amongst one another, whether they were a shell person or a contractor or even between the trades and between contractors, people felt comfortable doing that, and then the other one was to create an atmosphere where people felt free and empowered to bring their issues to the table and we would address it. And so four turn around the dynamics and the timeframe of executing work and we're working around the clock meant you have to address things quickly. You have to stand by it first off, very clearly expressed to the folks that safety was the paramount thing. We would stop work. Or you could stop work as an individual if you didn't feel safe or if you needed the appropriate tools or scaffolding, and that you were empowered to do that. And we did that through a number of things, very much an open form, making safety meetings of place where people felt free to discuss things. But one of the issues that we started with her, one of the activities we started with was training people in terms of when they came on site to actually tell him that we're doing something different. That was behind our word. So that meant training are only the shell folks, but all the contractor supervision. So that okay, this is not how you work in a joint and carrying Claver approach, but also at the work the workers, when we oriented them on as not imposing rules on him explaining what we trying to do, get them to work and understand and talk amongst one another and create that feeling that report is possible. Then the next step was basically demonstrating that we stood behind the words that we, uh we basically promised everybody at the beginning, and they were a number of different things, like safety cards basically encouraging people. Thio give safety cards in, but at the same time accepting those cards and getting back to the people with the commitment that within 24 hours we would address there situate. We will give him an answer and they may not necessarily like the answer, but we would have taken to the consideration and address it, and I'll be honest with you. We had basically achieved more than 99% on safety cars, and historically we may have had 50 to 60 safety cards during a large outage, or turn around with this process and demonstrating that you could put an I D in or concern, and we address that we ended up going over 300 safety cards in a 54 55 day period that created a reinforcement that people. I thought that they were being heard of there being listened to, and they're being respected. And the interesting thing is, we found even at one point the safety card started diminished, and what we realized was the safety actions were still going on. But people now started taking the responsibility of actually taking that incident or that activity they thought was potentially hazard and correcting it themselves, and felt empowered to do that. We went board and basically changed the premise off that, um and very clearly, just demonstrating that a there's care be we will follow up and we will respect your word and respect the fact that if we tell, you know that there's a reason behind it. But we will be honest, open and transparent.

spk_1:   10:00
Yeah, so that's interesting that the just having the conversation, making sure that the actions were you know, the feedback was then amount of what the actions were ended up creating a pool that they were ended. The guys ended up solving their own problems, and now here to sing

spk_0:   10:21
the other one was also toe again. Being the turnaround manager and being the leader of it, it was my watch that everybody was working on. And I actually went out and talk to supervision at their meetings, doctor the safety at safety meetings and talk to the workforce and left my cell phone number on their walls or their boards and said, Any time, any day and any even angry in the middle of night. People can call me if things weren't working and I wasn't there for the fact that I would actually follow up on the individual activity. But I, as a leader, needed to know that my systems and the processes were working there. And if they were great, if they weren't, somebody should tell me. And many a times I was challenged. I'd get the phone in the middle of night. My my spouse didn't necessarily like it, but that was my thing. But on the forefront, I found out what was eating everybody's lunch. We corrected it, addressed it and then moved on.

spk_1:   11:28
How interesting could you could you give us an example of what was So it was getting to people that you had to kind of go to work on? Well,

spk_0:   11:36
there were some issues in terms of, um, again, you imagine you can understand that when you try to make a cultural change like that, getting everybody to, uh, work at the same levels people will be asking for, say, on a traditional portable toilets somewhere, uh, wasn't being addressed because they thought you didn't require it. But in the end, when you look at it, it made sense or there were actually things out there that we weren't doing either between ah, contractor not following through on it, or a shell person, or may have gotten lost in the communication. A lot of things do happen just because of those things addressing him on, then making sure we followed up on them.

spk_1:   12:27
Fantastic. Thank you. And if you could give somebody that you either knew to turn around or is money turn around for the first time, If you could give them a piece of advice Um, what would it bay?

spk_0:   12:48
I think one of the things is that we many a times will specialize. Turnaround managers, uh, or supervisors, we we've we track and monitor data and track our progress, but many a times we hold it costar jobs. I found that openly sharing that information with everyone, Uh, your supervision. Your contractors in an open atmosphere is the bast, because then everybody wants to do a good job. If you give him the same information, they'll come to the awareness whether they're productivity's slipping, whether something was not missed, not delivered on time. Don't use it as a negative. Just use as information and people will do the right things. Peer pressure also is one of those things that and can help you in the situations, especially when you share information openly. A contractor or competitors, er will basically tell you on a 1 to 1, and they will contest everything you say. But if you're saying and sharing information openly and freely and not using it as a negative, competitors will sit back and also judge the individual and say, You know what? You may be making excuses, but the reality is you're not necessarily doing it or respectfully. They see that their competitors is doing really well in hitting all the marks, and then they reflect on Maybe they're not. And what could they do better so that open relationship, sharing information and then being honest with one another in a positive learning sense, as opposed to a negative way.

spk_1:   14:34
Very cool. Mm. Is there anything else that you think that somebody should should know about me? You spoken about this tripartite thing, collaborative culture being very open and transparent being therefore people, whether it's listening, doing something about the observations that made any else you could Anything else he could, uh, offer out from your wisdom for somebody. That's

spk_0:   15:04
well, you're too kind in terms with them. But like black on one of the things is that the reality of any type of outage or turn around you have things. We'll go bump in the night and you may end up having incidents. May be having people injured, use them as a learning experience, reflect on him positively and learn from them. And don't approach it as a inquisition many a times during the outage or we have somebody injured. I would actually go speak to that individual, uh, got hurt and I would be basically approaching them. Is first up introducing myself, asking how they were, Were they treated well? Do they need any other type of support for, um care and then explain to them that there will be a part of an investigation that they are a critical part because we wanted to find out what actually happened. What was what they're thinking, what drove him to the potential aspect of that and then introducing him to the investigation team. But I would not talk to them about the incident themselves. I would more focus on the care and collaborative aspect of it, Um, and that we will learn and that they won't be punished. There'll be key to that

spk_1:   16:28
is anything you want to say and still saying goodbye. We're gonna finish

spk_0:   16:34
your time and, uh, the opportunity to share my thoughts. Safety is one of those things that is not a competitive aspect. But again, in a time, in many areas in the world are short of skill trades, um, creating a site where it's you have a caring and collaborator atmosphere where people are looking after one another and you focus on that as individuals in the workforce out there, you want them to focus on two things. And again, most everybody knows there are four things and any type of major project or turn around their safety quality costs and schedule asked. And when I did discuss issues with, um is I want individuals out there, and that's gonna be supervision or the trades on the tools is focused on your safety. Focus on the safety of your of your, uh, joint are your fellow workers? Um because that's important, then the other one is quality of workmanship, which is all safety aspect, because if we if we don't have the quality and workmanship in there, we end up with potentially, you know, during startup and shutdowns of our units. Or while we're running, impacting our operation brethren, uh, in the process or in the bigger sense of safety, having incidents that affect community, the environment. And as we've seen recently in the industry, there's been a lot of big explosions and fires. Those two aspect safety and quality or what they need to focus on cost and schedule. As a turnaround manager, that's my headache. I don't need people to focus on that bus in the industry are type A personalities. We want to get things done. We want to do it in a hurry. But those are things I have as a manager. I have a lot of levers. I can pull on one of them is going back to my management and saying I need more time or more money, but with respect, the safety and the quality of that, it's the key that I need out of that ask out of the workforce. Yeah, again for the opportunity. And I appreciate the time.

spk_1:   18:53
I really appreciate you taking the time. Um, I feel like I'm gonna have my my new turn around. People listen to this podcast before they start, because I think it could make a difference to a lot of people. So I really do appreciate you taking time.

spk_0:   19:11
Very good. Thank you.

spk_1:   19:14
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