Roundtable Meeting — June 2-3, 1999
Tape #9:
Vision & Goal Discussion
The group was asked to develop a vision and three top goals. Following is the outcome of the discussion:
Vision
Reducing chemical process accidents to zero while building public trust through community interaction.
Top 3 Goals:
Continuation of Tape 9 Everyone was asked to give their number one goal.
Goals
Dr. Mannan: Now, look at these (1-23 and A-M) and try to assimilate them.
Voice: I would like to comment. You want incidents while building the trust of the community. We have put that as our goal. I am wondering if all of these other things are strategies on how to get there. Is that a different way to focus this?
Dr. Mannan: It is not really. But, let’s look at that. Let’s look at the ones that are "a reduction in incident" oriented and lump them into one which essentially says a reduction in incidents to zero and we have increased community trust.
Voice: I think it is the consensus that it is a goal and in fact this is all strategy in the process to get there.
Voice: I think we can also represent the small and medium sized enterprise as we talked about yesterday.
Voice: I read all of that and it is pretty much a statement of tools you can use to achieve a national goal of reducing accidents to zero and increasing community trust and interaction.
Dr. Monroe: If that is a good idea, then, could there be another number or letter added that includes, covers that.
Voice: I would propose a sort of single consensus call. Reducing chemical process accidents to zero while building public trust through community interaction. And I would suggest those kind of elements are all components of how we arrive. I don’t want to hang too many decorations on this tree, because all of this has a goal.
Voice: Absolutely, those seem to me activities to accomplish this.
Dr. Monroe: Does anyone else have an inclusive…
Voice: I want to support that inclusive statement and say that is our ultimate vision and then we need to establish methods to reach there, and way points along the line that we can identify, because that is a stretch goal, whether you are in industry or not in industry, that is an exceptional stretch goal. We need to identify midway points and find ways to get together and celebrate when we reach those midway points.
Voice: I think that is what the work groups ought to focus on.
Dr. Mannan: That is what I was going to suggest. Let’s not try to do the work of the breakout sessions. If everyone agree that that is a consensus goal that we can feel comfortable with, I suggest now that we focus your eyesight on the list and tell me, don’t add anymore, but tell me which ones you think go together. We don’t want a book on 40 different ones.
Voice: There are several up there that have to do with the cost benefit case for PSM. When I said about identifying metrics that relate PSM points in business, there are several that have to do with that kind of thing that are defining cost benefits that relate to the business. I think there are probably six or seven up there that you can combine into one.
Voice: Number 7, G, F… Those are metrics that relate to performance business objectives.
Voice: I have got three others that I think could be combined….
Dr. Mannan: Let’s finish this one first. Does anyone have an objection to combining 3, 7, F &G.
Voice: We have a suggestion here for a way to combine.
Tim: Establish metrics that relate safety performance to business objectives.
Dr. Mannan: Any objection to that?
Voice: Write the 4 letters underneath that.
Voice: My suggestion is number C, 15, and 19 appear to relate to databases regarding near misses and incidents/accidents which can be related to actual causes. So I would suggest that 15 could be a stand alone for C, 15 and 19.
Voice: Could K perhaps fit that group?
Voice: I would like to make a process suggestion. We have three groups that are going to break. Would it be appropriate to go through very quickly and see which numbers and letters go to each group and then let those groups and then let those groups combine or whatever it takes to look at those things.
Voice: I don’t think that we want to do that Jim. Darn near all of this is potentially on the table in each group. But I think it is appropriate to consolidate conceptual areas. It seems to me that the kind of concept we are trying to capture in the consolidation that Jerry has proposed is indeed an improvement in national data collection. Each one of those expresses a nuance of how to do that, which is appropriate for the workgroups.
Dr. Monroe: Could that be a goal? Improve national data collection.
Dr. Mannan: National data system for collection of near misses and accidents which can be related to actual causes.
Voice: I would like to suggest that 16 and 20 match what you have up there as your primary goal.
Tim: 16 and 20 are processes by which you achieve the primary goal.
Voice: I think we have to be careful of setting a goal of zero because the with the first accident it wipes it out…
Tim: I think Jim made a perfect statement, which was if you look at each one of these goals and recognize that we have to establish process interim steps to achieve them and I think those…
Voice: My problem with establish a goal above zero….. (inaudible)
(Everyone talking)
Dr. Mannan: So C, 15, 19 have been combined to become 15.
Irv: I think one thing that we have to guard against is what is basically trivial statements. I mean, who is for national accidents? If we come up with platitudes, we will not have faced real issues, we will have avoided making choices, we will all go away feeling good but we will not have accomplished anything. There have been industry statements that I have quoted repeated times by companies who at the time were head of the best companies today about zero accidents and the results have come home to plague them under certain business circumstances. I think we need to be very careful in going after platitudes.
Jim: That is why I am concerned with saying zero is our goal --- but do many of us believe that in the next year or two years from now we are actually going to be at zero?
Irv: How about five years or ten years.
Voice: No, I believe that by 2005 we will cut by 90%.
Voice: But if your goal is to reach zero then you are constantly striving to reach zero and if it happens then at least you are trying to reach zero.
Voice: Moving toward that zero goal, you have to do something that Overman said, up here number 20 talks about year to year reductions of 15%, somewhere over there H it talks about some national measures issues. It seems to me that that all comes together. By moving towards something, you are building trust, you are reducing incidents, sharing information and making gains.
Tim: That is the key thing that you have to accomplish here.
Irv: And say that you will have a defined rate of improvement of an ultimate reduction to zero.
Rather than put it in the goal it ought to be continuous improvement toward the goal.
Jim: But that is a fluff. The public could care less about continuous improvements.
Dr. Mannan: Let me pull you back again. I want you to focus. Now that we have consolidated some of them, any others that you would like to consolidate?
Voice: 1 and 11.
Dr. Mannan: Reduction in property damage eliminating offsite impacts. Any problem with that? Okay, combine 1 and 11.
Irv: Is that redundant with zero accidents? If you have zero accidents, you don’t have much property damage.
Dr. Mannan: Combine 1 and 11 to say reduction in property damage and elimination of offsite impacts.
Jon Averback: I disagree in saying that this one is assumed in the other goal. You have a broad goal of zero accidents at all. That may be very difficult to achieve. But if you can decrease the scale of your accidents to a point where there is no offsite impacts. Were you able to get this on tape? It might be more feasible to achieve a goal of zero offsite impacts than it would be to achieve a goal of zero incidents at all. So I think they are distinct. That is why I am raising an objection.
Voice: I think you are going to have a hard time getting a consensus then because some of us here are going to say that it is not acceptable to have onsite impacts and not offsite impacts
Angela Summers: But equipment breaks down, we don’t need a seatbelt campaign, we need a ---- happens campaign.
Jon Averback: I hate to bust the goals, but Irv, you are the one who has been talking about setting meaningful goals and achievable goals, and I think that if you want to define achieving zero offsite impact and property damage as an intermediate goal, perhaps, to the eventual goal of zero impacts of all, I can accept that. I do think they are distinct and I think it is a meaningful interim goal.
Dr. Monroe: Remember also that this afternoon our three groups are going to be looking at process, databases, and activities to accomplish the goals. Does that help to solve this matter?
Irv: I have a problem of having a goal of zero to off the workplace but it is alright for workers.
And if you were to say to me that these are different classes, albeit it is very difficult to identify anyone who has been killed offsite in the US, I would prefer to see a goal that states a continual reduction in process incidents and the impacts of incidents with fixed goals… in other words, each institution sets a fixed goal and issues a record against which they make it. In other words, traceable fixed reductions. If an institution is making continued goals and has to defend when it doesn’t make them, it is going to eventually and faster than you can imagine get own to a manageable rate. That I think can be monitored. There are metrics for it and it does not differentiate between stakeholders.
Jim: I agree with everything you are saying because that is what we did. We looked at our system and said this is where we need to go. But what we are called here to do today is to establish a national chemical safety goal. Each one of us here is going to have a component of that. Each one of us is going to have to sit within our corporate culture some sort of time schedule for achieving that goal. I am still bothered by the fact that we don’t get consensus that says the ultimate national safety goal has to be that we don’t get anybody hurt and we don’t expose anybody. And anybody is an all-inclusive statement. That is my problem as the ultimate goal. Will we reach it during my lifetime? I pray that we do. I hope we do. But the answer is that is where we have got to strive to reach. How each individual component of that sets up systems to reach that is another discussion. We are talking not about the Dow Chemical Co. goal, or the EPA goal, or the EDF goal, we are talking about THE national chemical safety goal for the 21st century, and I don’t think we can set anything less than zero accidents.
End of tape