Assessment Project Symposium — October 28, 1999
Mary Kay O'Connor Process Safety Center
Chemical Safety Program Assessment Project
GEORGE BUSH PRESIDENTIAL CONFERENCE CENTER
TEXAS A&M UNIVERSITY
COLLEGE STATION, TEXAS
MARY KAY O'CONNOR PROCESS SAFETY CENTER
CHEMICAL SAFETY PROGRAM
ASSESSMENT PROJECT SYMPOSIUM
OCTOBER 28, 1999
Reporter: Judith G. Werlinger
CSR 731, RMR CRR FAPR
2
A P P E A R A N C E S
1
2
DR. SAM MANNAN, Facilitator
3 Mary Kay O'Connor Process Safety Center
4 MS. KARI BARRETT (Group One Facilitator)
Chemical Manufacturers Association
5
MR. BILL ERNY
6 America Petroleum Institute
7 MIKE MARSHALL
OSHA
8
MR. JOHNNY WRIGHT
9 Amoco Corporation
10 MR. DAVID WHITE
Industrial Fire World
11
MR. JIM MAKRIS
12 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
13 MS. KATHY JONES
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
14
MR. LEE FELDSTEIN
15 National Safety Council
16 MR. WILLIAM ROGERS
Mary Kay O'Connor Process Safety Center
17
MR. LUIS ARANGO
18 HSB Industrial Risk Insurers
19 MR. JIM OVERMAN (Group Two Facilitator)
Dow Chemical Company
20
MR. JOHN STEPHENS
21 Conoco
22 MR. JIM NORONHA
Mary Kay O'Connor Process Safety Center
23
MR. TIM GABLEHOUSE (Group Three Facilitator)
24 Colorado Emergency Planning Commission
25
3
A P P E A R A N C E S
1
2 MS. LOIS EPSTEIN
Environmental Defense Fund
3
MR. JERRY POJE
4 Chemical Safety and Hazard Board
5 MR. ROBERT SMERKO
Chlorine Institute
6
MR. YIGAL RIEZEL
7 (Guest) Israel
8 MS. PAM KASTER
Citizens for a Cleaner Environment
9
MR. ROBERT BARRISH
10 State of Delaware DN Rec.
11 MR. BRAD CLEMENT
Vulcan Chemicals
12
MR. GREG KEEPORTS
13 Rohm & Haas Company
14 MS. IRENE JONES
Huntsman Corporation
15
MR. JERRY BRADSHAW
16 Texas A&M University, Chemical Engineering Dept.
17 MR. DAVE WILLETTE
18 MR. JOHN STEPHENS
19 MR. PHIL COGAN
Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board
20
MR. IRV ROSENTHAL
21 Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board
22
23
24
25
4
1
2
INDEX
3 PAGE
Welcoming Comments - DR. DRAGOMIR BUKUR. 5
4 Introductions........................... 14
Overview/Procedures - DR. SAM MANNAN.... 18
5 Overview - Group One - KELI BARRETT..... 44
Overview - Group Two - JIM OVERMAN...... 46
6 Overview - Group Three - TIM GABLEHOUSE. 47
7 (Breakouts)
8 Lunch Session........................... 56
9 (Breakouts)
10 Conclusionary Session................... 115
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
5
1 MORNING SESSION
2 DR. MANNAN: Good morning once again,
3 and welcome to the Chemical Safety Program Assessment
4 Roundtable Meeting. This is the second in a series of
5 roundtables that just started and a summary of the project
6 of what we have done, in a minute; but before I go there,
7 I'd like to introduce Dr. Dragomir Bukur. Dr. Bukur is
8 the Associate Department Head of Chemical Engineering.
9 He's going to give the official welcome.
10 Dr. Bukur.
11 DR. BUKUR: Good morning. Howdy.
12 (Audience reciprocates "Howdy")
13 DR. BUKUR: It's my pleasure to welcome
14 you on behalf of the Chemical Engineering Department. I
15 think I'll tell you a few things about our Department, for
16 those who are not familiar, and about the Center, and we
17 are proud to have the Center in our Department.
18 We are part of the College of Engineering,
19 and the College of Engineering has about 10,000 students
20 here at A&M; one of the largest colleges in the country.
21 And the Chemical Engineering Department has about 800
22 students at this time, and we graduate about 140 B.S.
23 Chemical Engineers, 15 Ph.D.s, and about 16 to 20 Masters
24 students. We are a pretty large program, by national
25 standards. And based on our number of chemical engineers
6
1 that we graduate, we graduate about 3% of all chemical
2 engineers in the United States.
3 What we do here has a large impact on
4 overall education in chemical engineering, and we are
5 fortunate to have the Mary Kay O'Connor Center established
6 at A&M about four years ago, through the generosity of Mr.
7 O'Connor, who endowed the Center, and who has been a great
8 supporter since then, and has contributed very generously
9 his time and great deal of commitment to the success of
10 the Center.
11 Also, the Center has a very active advisory
12 board and all kind of committees: technical, advisories,
13 steering committee; and this group is extremely
14 enthusiastic and very dedicated to the success of the
15 Center.
16 I think the Center has made great strides
17 since it was established four years ago, and its mission
18 is in the areas of education, research, and the service or
19 outreach, and in the area of education, where probably we
20 have great impact, because of the size of A&M's program,
21 in educating engineers.
22 The course in process safety was established
23 and is offered every semester here at A&M, and about 90
24 students take this course every year and are exposed to
25 the -- to the process safety aspects for this course; and
7
1 when they go to industry, then they are promoters of
2 safety from the integrated approach, and -- which ties the
3 safety consideration at the stage of design rather than at
4 the end as an add-on to the existing processes, to make
5 them safer. So I think that's one of the great
6 contributions that the Center makes towards education of
7 the students and promoting safety in chemical plants.
8 In terms of graduate education, I think we
9 are going to soon introduce some graduate courses on risk
10 assessment; again, broaden the area of process safety in
11 our curriculum. In terms of research, the Center has
12 initiated many, many initiatives, although it's a very
13 young center, but it already has very active programs in
14 the area of aerosol formation, dispersal modeling,
15 reactive chemicals, various databases for accidents and
16 hazardous substances; also has worked on the Y2K problem
17 for small- and medium-sized companies; and it has made a
18 great deal of accomplishment in a very short period of
19 time.
20 Also, we are very proud of the Center in
21 terms of its outreach and services; and has --
22 successfully, the second symposium has been completed the
23 last two days. We've had the symposium here to draw a
24 large number of people from industry, and has been very
25 successful. And, also, the Center has a lot of other -- a
8
1 newsletter, and its very active website, where one can
2 find useful information on all aspects of safety. So, so
3 we're really very proud of the accomplishments of the
4 Center during this short time that it has been at A&M.
5 I would like to wish you a success in your
6 meeting today. You're certainly working on an extremely
7 important topic and problem that, in the end, will make
8 all our plants in our community a safer place, and I wish
9 your success in this endeavor. And, once again, welcome
10 to Texas A&M. And I hope you'll have some time in your
11 busy meetings to enjoy some nice weather that we have
12 here. Welcome again. (Applause)
13 DR. MANNAN: Thank you, Dr. Bukur. I
14 think it is important -- very important for all of you to
15 know the kind of support we have. Dr. Anthony couldn't be
16 here today.
17 So, Dr. Bukur, thank you for coming in and
18 stepping in at this short period of time.
19 He has other commitments, so he will
20 probably be leaving in the morning, but coming back during
21 lunchtime. So he will be with us for lunch. If you have
22 questions regarding the Chemical Engineering Department or
23 other University activities, please feel free to stop him
24 and ask him about those things.
25 Again, let me extend a welcome from my part
9
1 on my behalf and for the Center. I think it shows a lot
2 of commitment on each one of your parts to be here; some
3 as far away as Australia, Mark Tweeddale, and our friend
4 from Israel, Yigal Yriezel.
5 Am I saying your name right?
6 MR. YRIEZEL: Yes.
7 DR. MANNAN: Okay. So there is a lot
8 of commitment from different people to participate in
9 these activities. There's a lot of interest in how this
10 activity progresses. Our Israeli friend has told us that
11 they're watching what they are doing -- what we are doing
12 so they can learn from us and maybe implement it there;
13 same as Mark's opinion in terms of what we're doing here.
14 Mark also brings an expedience with regard
15 to measurement systems, and he will participate in that
16 discussion in the measurement breakout.
17 Also, I've been told that there are some
18 people on the European side that may be interested in our
19 activities.
20 And, Kathy, if you want to share some of
21 those thoughts later, that would be interesting.
22 So not only is this project important to us
23 as a nation, as a country, as a community, but this
24 project is important also in the respect that others are
25 watching what we are doing, and they learn from us, or
10
1 have things -- input to give to us which may be
2 important.
3 Without taking anymore of your time, I'd
4 like to do two things; first, go over the agenda and tell
5 you what we want to do today and what the expected
6 outcomes may be. Another thing I want to do is recognize
7 a couple of organizations.
8 You know, the resources for this project and
9 the Center's other activities come from different
10 organizations or different sources. For example, we have
11 the main endowment from the O'Connor gift, and that forms
12 the core funding or permanent funding. There's University
13 support, there's industrial consortium support, and there
14 is project-to-project activities. There is symposium
15 activities, continuing education activities, and then
16 there is specific funding support for this project.
17 And I am pleased to announce today that we
18 have two other organizations joining in this effort, the
19 Chlorine Institute, Bob Smerko, if you would stand up or
20 raise your hand, whatever. (Applause). They have joined
21 the Center recently and I'm happy to have them here.
22 Also, HSB Industrial Risk Insurers, Luis Arango.
23 (Applause). So they have also joined this project, as
24 well as the Center consortium. Again, we're happy to have
25 them here. We're delighted to have the support, not only
11
1 financially, but also your time and your input. That's
2 very important. Really appreciate that personally, also.
3 The other thing I want to recognize is the
4 Presidential Conference Center staff and the Mary Kay
5 O'Connor Center staff. They always do a good job, and I
6 sometimes fail to recognize them by name; but Mark
7 Chalupka, sitting over there. I don't know how he does
8 it; but, you know, he seems to put everything together.
9 Yesterday when we left, this place was set up for the
10 exhibit area and the food area, and look what he's done
11 here. I think you stayed up here till 4 o'clock in the
12 morning. Thank you. (Applause).
13 You know, we always -- it's human nature
14 that when things go wrong, we do want to complain to
15 somebody, but we forget sometimes to recognize people who
16 do well with their jobs, and I don't want to make that
17 mistake. Thank you, Mark.
18 So let me go on into the agenda now. If you
19 look at the agenda, the one that's in your packets or the
20 ones that you picked up that were on the table, coming in,
21 there's several iterations. And even last night, when our
22 Project Advisory Committee met, we looked at it and we
23 said okay, we need to change some more. Okay. So here's
24 what we're going to do. Okay. This first joint part --
25 First of all, everything that happens in
12
1 this room is going to be transcribed by the court recorder
2 here. Let me see if I can say her name right. Judith
3 Weinberger (phonetic).
4 THE REPORTER: Werlinger.
5 DR. MANNAN: Werlinger. Judith
6 Werlinger. She goes by Judy. She says that only when she
7 gets in trouble she is called Judith (Laughter). I hope
8 you don't get in trouble today. So everything that
9 happens in this room is going to be recorded by her. When
10 we go into the breakout rooms, those are not recorded; but
11 when the reports come back from those, they will be
12 recorded again.
13 We'll start in this room for about an hour,
14 okay, maybe even less than that, where I'll give a summary
15 of what happened in June, and then the project progress to
16 date; and then after that, there are three subcommittees,
17 and I will describe those in a little bit more detail in a
18 minute. The three subcommittee chairs will spend a few
19 minutes -- I will leave it up to them how short they want
20 to be -- but a few minutes on telling what their concepts
21 are as to where they want to take their subcommittee
22 activities today.
23 Then we go into the breakout rooms and those
24 are going to be real roll-up-your-sleeves working
25 sessions, where you delve into the issues and come up
13
1 with -- last night I said that I'd like to, in a utopian
2 way, perfect situation, like to have an action plan.
3 Okay. But I'll tell you this very clearly; I recognize
4 that when you go into the breakout room, you may realize
5 that you don't have enough to develop an action plan yet.
6 That's okay. But if you're shooting for an ultimate goal,
7 it is the action plan we're looking for; but if that's not
8 possible, come back and report what you have
9 accomplished and why an action plan is not possible.
10 After -- so the breakout is probably going
11 to go on till noon. At noon, we're going to have lunch
12 brought in. Lunch is going to be typical Texas stuff
13 lunch: Barbecue. I hope y'all enjoy that. After lunch,
14 the subcommittee chairs will spend about 15 minutes each
15 reporting on what their subcommittees did, whether or not
16 they developed an action plan or what their findings were
17 or what they came up with. After that, there is going to
18 be a general discussion again for this whole group here in
19 this room. And then the general discussion shouldn't last
20 more than another half an hour or so. And then the
21 subcommittees are going to be sent back into the breakout
22 rooms to either revise what they have done or do something
23 different. It's up to them.
24 After that, what I want to do is spend maybe
25 about 15, 20 minutes deciding what our next step should
14
1 be: When we should meet again; should it be the whole
2 group; should it be smaller groups; what the Project
3 Advisory Committee should do in the interim; whether or
4 not the project team, the people that are working in the
5 Center, they should be do something that's different;
6 whatever the issues may be. Now, that's the game plan for
7 the whole day today.
8 Before we go to the summary of the June
9 meeting and the project progress to date, there are a
10 couple -- another couple of things I'd like to do; number
11 one, go around the room and have everyone introduced. I
12 know most of you know everybody, but I think it's a good
13 thing to say the names, the organizations, and any other
14 comments they might have. Because the first time we came
15 here, as you know, we really didn't have a good idea where
16 we were going to go. But a lot of people now have a
17 pretty good idea of what we did and where we want to go.
18 So if you want to make a few comments, that's fine. And
19 then the next thing I want to do is have you ask any
20 questions, either procedural or outcome issues.
21 Start right over here with Kari.
22 MS. BARRETT: Kari Barrett, Chemical
23 Manufacturers Association, and I will make some comments a
24 little later.
25 MR. ERNY: Bill Erny with the American
15
1 Petroleum Institute. This is my first meeting, so I'm
2 here to catch up maybe a little bit and get a better idea
3 on where the whole activity is headed, so I know we would
4 like to support the activity.
5 MR. WILLETTE: Hi. I'm Dave Willette.
6 I am here with the Center. And I can only say how
7 exciting it has been to deal with these issues and, and
8 look at what we can do, if we do it right, and the changes
9 we can make for our industry and really for our country.
10 MR. WRIGHT: I'm Johnny Wright with PPM
11 Amoco, Process Safety Specialist.
12 MR. MARSHALL: I'm Mike Marshall with
13 OSHA out of Washington. I'm like Bill, it's my first
14 meeting and I'm excited to be here. I think this is a
15 real good project, and I'm happy to support it.
16 MR. WHITE: Dave White with Industrial
17 Fire World. And I am just really excited from what I see
18 happening here. And I just think that this group and
19 organization will make an impact, and I think that you
20 people should be proud what Sam and everybody is doing
21 here.
22 MR. MAKRIS: I'm Jim Overman from
23 Dow. (Laughter). My name is Jim Makris, and I'm from the
24 Environmental Protection Agency.
25 MS. JONES: Hi. I'm Kathy Jones with
16
1 the Environmental Protection Agency.
2 MR. FELDSTEIN: Lee Feldstein, National
3 Safety Council.
4 MR. ROGERS: Bill Rogers from the
5 Center, Experimental Research.
6 MR. ARANGO: Hi. I'm Luis Arango, HSB
7 Industrial Risk Insurers.
8 MR. OVERMAN: I'm Jim Makris with the
9 EPA, and I'm here to help you. (Laughter).
10 I'm Jim Overman from Dow Chemical.
11 MR. STEPHENS: John Stephens with
12 Conoco.
13 MR. NORONHA: John Noronha from the
14 Center. I just recently retired from Eastman Kodak.
15 MR. GABLEHOUSE: Tim Gablehouse. I'm a
16 member of the Colorado Emergency Planning Commission and
17 also chair the EPC in Colorado.
18 MS. EPSTEIN: Lois Epstein with the
19 Environmental Defense Fund in D.C.
20 MR. POJE: Jerry Poje with the U. S.
21 Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board.
22 DR. TWEEDDALE: Mark Tweeddale,
23 semi retired from the Department of Chemical Engineering,
24 University of Sydney.
25 MR. YRIEZEL: Yigal Yriezel, a guest
17
1 from Israel.
2 MR. SMERKO: Bob Smerko with Chlorine
3 Institute, and delighted to be here.
4 MS. KASTER: Pam Kaster, Citizens for a
5 Cleaner Environment, and pleased to be involved with a
6 project that is solution-oriented.
7 MR. BARRISH: Bob Barrish, State of
8 Delaware, representing the state perspective.
9 MR. BESWICK: I'm Paul Beswick. This
10 is also my first meeting. I am really excited to be here
11 as well. I am with the Metropolitan Water District of
12 Southern California. We're water wholesalers, supplyig
13 water to essentially southern California, to 16, 20
14 million people. Also a major user of chlorine for water
15 disinfection. We are very concerned, of course, about how
16 we handle chlorine, and our concern goes beyond that to
17 the water industry in general in the states, and so we're
18 hoping by our participation to gain a leadership role in
19 helping to make the world safer.
20 MR. CLEMENT: Brad Clement with Vulcan
21 Chemicals.
22 MR. KEEPORTS: Greg Keeports with Rohm
23 & Haas Co.
24 MS. JONES: Irene Jones with Huntsman.
25 MR. BRADSHAW: I am Jerry Bradshaw,
18
1 Chemical Engineering Department. Also I assist Sam
2 whenever he needs it, and the Center.
3 MR. COGAN: I'm Carol Brawner
4 (phonetic) from EPA. (Laughter). I'm glad to see Jim
5 Makris has gotten better looking.
6 Phil Cogan with the Chemical Safety Board.
7 MR. ROSENTHAL: Irv Rosenthal, Chemical
8 Safety Board.
9 DR. MANNAN: Thank y'all very much.
10 Now let's spend a few minutes on any questions or issues
11 that you may have on procedure or outcome.
12 Irv.
13 MR. ROSENTHAL: Sam, one of the things
14 I wonder in the afternoon as to whether we could perhaps
15 shorten the report period by 15 minutes each, and I will
16 tell you the reason why.
17 The main objective ultimately is target
18 reduction goals, which are going to depend on metrics
19 based on data. The question is that we need to ask
20 ourselves, when we get the reports, is it possible to get
21 the type of metrics we need from the database. In other
22 words, some time to integrate and see where we stand
23 relative to the three subcommittees. And it might be
24 worth trying to carve out a half hour in which we review
25 the questions: Are these three separate efforts focused
19
1 to get to the common goal.
2 DR. MANNAN: You know, just leave it to
3 Irv to cut to the chase and go right to the heart of the
4 matter.
5 You know, Irv, last night when the Project
6 Advisory Committee met, we spent a little bit of time --
7 quite a bit of time talking exactly about this. And
8 ultimately, I don't know if the consensus was that or not,
9 but we agreed to disagree to the point where we said that,
10 let's let this work parallel for the time being, because
11 each group may come back and tell the other group, saying
12 that y'all work these to modify in this respect, that's
13 what I need in my work. So, yes, we want to proceed
14 parallel for a little while, and then maybe we want to
15 make it sequential later on.
16 Anyone else on the Project Advisory
17 Committee want to add anything to that?
18 MR. OVERMAN: We could have had our
19 meeting in about 10 minutes instead of an hour and a half,
20 if Irv had been there to express it so well.
21 DR. MANNAN: Exactly. Exactly.
22 Well, thank you, Irv. And as I said, you
23 just cut to the chase and go right to the heart of the
24 matter. That's why we like to have you here.
25 Judy tells me that for her to transcribe it
20
1 better, if you will tell your name, then she can
2 transcribe it better, before you speak.
3 MR. MAKRIS: Jim Makris.
4 Sam, there might be some time, if we could
5 figure out how to work through the lunchtime. It might be
6 an advantage -- I assume we're going to have a box lunch
7 or something like that.
8 DR. MANNAN: Well, we don't have box
9 lunches, we have the barbecue; but we can serve ourselves
10 and then sit down.
11 MR. OVERMAN: We may save a half hour
12 if we could, you know, do that.
13 DR. MANNAN: Okay. No problem. Any
14 other questions on procedure?
15 Okay. Let me start then by giving a summary
16 of the project, and move on.
17 You know, I like to give credit where credit
18 is due, because I also like to be critical when people
19 don't do a good job; as many of you do, too. Okay. And
20 in this world, I think there are three types of people:
21 The ones -- there are ones who make things happen, and
22 then there are those ones that are part of things that
23 happen, and then there are ones who watch things happen.
24 Okay.
25 I'd like to believe that all of us in this
21
1 room are probably in the first category: We're trying to
2 make things happen. Okay. But I think one of the
3 foremost in that is probably Jim Makris and some of the
4 others that sat with me and thought of this idea. I thank
5 Jim and Tim Gablehouse and, to some extent, Fred Mylar,
6 when we first started talking about this; but Jim
7 particularly.
8 After the Center was formed and we first had
9 our first symposium, and we started talking about making
10 safety second nature, I did my first presentation about
11 what our thoughts about the Center's activities were. He
12 and I started talking and we had some serious thought as
13 to where chemical safety should go. So I want to give him
14 good credit as one of the persons who wants to make things
15 happen. Has the vision. Okay. It was not -- I don't
16 want to take credit for the whole idea. I did take it and
17 run with it. But he did encourage me. And as Tim
18 Gablehouse would say, he pulled out his pom-poms and
19 became the cheerleader and started jumping up and down
20 (laughter) and encouraged me on.
21 And I think we have made a lot of progress.
22 But I also want to say that this progress is meaningless
23 if we don't keep moving, don't keep the momentum, and then
24 also don't keep wide involvement of all stakeholders.
25 Okay. We are going to make mistakes as we go along, and
22
1 hopefully recover from those mistakes, and those mistakes
2 are not going to be deadly mistakes.
3 One of the things that I want all of you to
4 be aware of at all times is that we must let everyone
5 speak their mind. We must respect everyone's opinion, no
6 matter how extreme or how different those opinions may be
7 from ours.
8 Another thing I want to encourage you to do
9 is, if you feel that a certain stakeholder group is
10 under-represented, is not here, or we don't have the right
11 people, tell me, tell the Project Advisory Committee. We
12 will do our best to get them here. Okay.
13 Sometimes some of these stakeholder groups,
14 particularly non-industry and non-government groups, they
15 don't have funding for travel or expenses. We'll try to
16 help with that, and we have done so in the past. But we
17 will bend over backwards to include all stakeholders.
18 Because, as I said, the success that we might have in this
19 project are meaningless if we don't have wide stakeholder
20 participation. And I for one will do everything possible
21 to make sure that that happens.
22 So if you see something that you see is
23 missing, either in the stakeholder group or the proper
24 representation from the stakeholder group, bring it to my
25 attention, and we will do the best we can.
23
1 That's what I mean by the first bullet here, "The
2 stakeholder consensus."
3 So when we first started talking about it,
4 we said, No. 1, we do want to improve chemical safety and
5 that's one of the steps; but how do we get there? Okay.
6 In order to get there, we have to establish base line, we
7 have to establish measurement systems, we have to
8 establish target introduction goals, and so on. So that
9 is when we get some initial work starting early this
10 year. And -- well, started late last year; but early this
11 year, most of the bulk of the work was done. As we
12 started putting some of the material and some of the
13 documents together, we realized that in order to get more
14 input from the people who were, so to say, in the
15 hinterland or, so to say, in the front lines, we need to
16 get a larger group together and see where we're going to
17 go. So that's when this idea of the June roundtable
18 meeting came about and we pulled that together.
19 The June roundtable meeting...let me first
20 refresh your memory as to how we went about putting that
21 roundtable meeting together. We sat down again with folks
22 from EPA, some from the industry, some from public
23 interest groups. Some of them, we talked directly
24 face-to-face. Some talked on the phone. And we canvassed
25 as to what kind of groups need to be. And I think we came
24
1 out with a long list of federal agencies, state agencies,
2 industry groups, professional trade unions, academia,
3 public interest groups, environmental groups, LEPCs,
4 citizens groups, and so on. And then as we went through
5 there, we started pulling together names of people that
6 would fit certain criteria. For example, they were the
7 right people with the right expertise; second thing, they
8 believed passionately in the subject; and the third thing
9 is that they wanted to make a difference, wanted to
10 contribute.
11 Invitations went out to them. And the
12 invitation group was a total of about 70, or 70 plus.
13 Finally -- schedule issues and other issues -- about 45
14 accepted the invitation, maybe even closer to 50. I can't
15 remember the right number, but those are on your report
16 given to you. About 50 or so came to the June roundtable
17 meeting. Before they came, of course, they were sent a
18 briefing binder with some of the initial thoughts of where
19 we were and where we wanted to go. The briefing binder
20 also contained, what we call five briefing papers and five
21 different issues that the project identified.
22 The group of 45 or 50 studied the briefing
23 binder, came to the June Roundtable Meeting which was held
24 exactly in this same room, and over two full days, pretty
25 intensive days, the first day was used for the initial
25
1 presentations and the briefing papers. The second day was
2 mainly used for working session breakout groups. And
3 ultimately, through an unorthodox, very unscientific way,
4 I'll admit, we threw up everyone's idea, what they wanted
5 to see happen in chemical safety, and there were some
6 flip-charts all over the room, and we collated those. We
7 did not have extensive discussion on each one of those
8 items, I'll grant you that, but there was some discussion
9 back and forth.
10 There was some discussion as to which item
11 was synonymous with another item, combination/collation of
12 items, and then finally we asked everybody to vote on
13 them. And the way we did the voting was that -- you know,
14 I don't know, there were maybe 30 or so items that were
15 thrown up on those flip-charts -- but everyone in the room
16 was given three votes. Pick the three items that are
17 nearest and dearest to your heart. As I said, very
18 unorthodox way, very unscientific way of doing it; but a
19 way to do it.
20 And as we picked -- collated those votes
21 back, I will tell you one incredible thing happened.
22 There was wide consensus in the top three items. I mean,
23 you look at the voting again -- I can't remember the
24 numbers, but if you will look at the report, the top three
25 got like close to 30 votes, and then a very sharp drop-off
26
1 to the fourth one and on to the 29th or 30th, however many
2 there were. I think that's -- the third one was, like, 24
3 votes and the fourth one was nine.
4 So I submitted at that time, I submit to you
5 even now, that basically that group came together and had
6 a consensus of what they saw as a national goal, within a
7 certain margin of error again, that a study like that
8 has. And then the issue was: What do we do about this?
9 Okay.
10 Another thing that happened was that, give
11 them the diversity of the whole stakeholder group. They
12 came together and adopted a very, very profound and
13 thought-provoking vision. There was some debate that that
14 is not possible; but on the other hand, there was wide
15 agreement that any vision shorter than zero chemical
16 accidents is probably not right. Because it doesn't
17 matter which side of the aisle you come from, to say that
18 I'll get up in the accident (sic), assuming that there's
19 -- I will get up in the morning assuming that there's
20 going to be an accident, is not practical or is not
21 right. We should all shoot for a vision of zero chemical
22 accidents. That may not be or that may be a utopian goal
23 in the near future, but that's the vision you have to
24 strive for; anything short of that is probably not
25 right.
27
1 Again, there is, more or less, a unanimous
2 consensus on that. We have some disagreements, there may
3 be some issues that maybe we're going too far ahead
4 without thinking through; but still, I think we had a
5 consensus on that.
6 So after that again, it became: How do we
7 implement this? So what we did is we put together three
8 subcommittees, and the three subcommittees were charged
9 with those three goals. How do you make those three goals
10 happen? The idea being, if you make those three goals
11 happen, we will sooner or later -- hopefully sooner --
12 accomplish the vision that we had all agreed on.
13 Those three subcommittees were led by three
14 chairs or facilitators, if you are more comfortable with
15 that terminology; I don't really care. But the first goal
16 was the national data system, the second goal was the
17 development of a measurement system, the third goal was
18 targeted reduction goals. So we selected three
19 subcommittees.
20 Now I also tell you this; that those three
21 subcommittees that were selected is something that we just
22 pulled together and we don't have to stick with if we
23 don't want to. If they are not the right people that need
24 to be in that subcommittee, we need to change that.
25 That's all possible. Also, we can add people, if we need
28
1 to, okay, if you think the right people are not there.
2 So based on that findings of that
3 roundtable, we also did a couple of other things. We
4 constituted a Project Advisory Committee. Okay? If
5 P-A-C, PAC doesn't sound like the right acronym for you,
6 we can adopt another acronym. But the way I look at that
7 Project Advisory Committee is that it's more of -- more or
8 less a coordinating committee or project oversight
9 committee that works on a more day-to-day basis with both
10 the subcommittee chairs and the project group here at the
11 Center to make sure that the thoughts of the larger group
12 are being implemented. Okay. So we've put some structure
13 and mechanism into place to make sure everyone's input is
14 taking place.
15 The Project Advisory Committee has met only
16 once face-to-face, we had a conference call, there's
17 e-mail conversations, and so on and so forth. I hope the
18 Project Advisory Committee is going to get more active and
19 participate in the whole process. I realize the time
20 constraints of the different people involved, but still I
21 hope that we'll get some more input from them.
22 Project progress to date. We have several
23 people working on this project, and those of you who
24 attended the two days of symposium and met some of the
25 people. But specifically, I want to mention two things
29
1 very briefly. One is the database work that has been
2 going on.
3 On the database work we have done, a lot of
4 database analysis, we have looked at different databases.
5 We have produced an analysis of those different databases.
6 Some of have been published/some have not been published.
7 Also, Eboni McCray, one of the graduate students, is
8 working on this problem and -- as part of her thesis. She
9 will be here later in the morning to talk to you about
10 what she has accomplished. But as far as her thesis, she
11 has come up with a database proposal. And in the database
12 subcommittee, this will be discussed in more detail
13 later. But to this whole larger group I want to caution
14 you, that the database proposal she comes up with is not
15 even a guidance to you; it's -- she's just thrown it up as
16 an example. Okay? Or take it as something to start your
17 talks. Seed talks. Okay? So don't assume that that's
18 something set in concrete. You know, as I said last
19 night, too, she is focused on her thesis, and she wants to
20 show that there is an end to what she has done. So she
21 comes from that point of view and she feels very strong
22 about that. As far as this committee is concerned, take
23 that just as an example.
24 Another work we have ongoing, some of the
25 others in the Center, have been working on coming up with
30
1 a mechanism to describe or relate safety with business
2 objectives or performance issues. The idea is this, okay.
3 Even though that kind of a measurement system really does
4 not measure progress in terms of national chemical safety
5 issues, but we are really struggling with two types of
6 problems; one is how do you encourage chemical safety on
7 an individual company basis; two is, how do you measure
8 progress on a national basis? I think on a national basis
9 is to measure progress. And that's why I'm really
10 delighted to have Mark Tweeddale from Australia over
11 here. He has some ideas of how measurement systems can be
12 used and identify this on an international basis. And he
13 will be happy to make some comments in the measurement
14 system -- or metrics subcommittee.
15 Is that right, Mark?
16 DR. TWEEDDALE: I'll try, Sam. That's
17 all I can say.
18 DR. MANNAN: He's very humble and
19 modest, but I have great hopes of what he can contribute.
20 The other thing is that in terms of the
21 individual company issues, the idea is that, you know, as
22 long as safety is viewed as something that takes away from
23 the bottom line, then we'll always have divergent
24 opinions, depending on which stakeholder group you are
25 coming from. Okay? But I have always felt that safety
31
1 contributes to the bottom line as contrasted or taking
2 away from the bottom line. But the point or the challenge
3 we have is how do we show it to both the person who is
4 running the company and to all the stakeholder groups.
5 We have come up with certain mechanisms --
6 we have not, I think, finalized it or developed it into a
7 state where we can present actual co-relationships, but
8 just come up with certain mechanisms to where we can show
9 that safety is directly related to business objectives and
10 operational issues. One example I can give you is that
11 every company does statistical process control. And that
12 is usually the key two words, "operational issues," like
13 producing specification product. But I will submit to you
14 that the company that has problems with this statistical
15 cost control, with variables going up and down all over
16 the place, that not only produce that -- or off-spec
17 product, which causes a loss for the company, or less
18 profit, but they also have more accidents or more safety
19 problems. Okay? So that's one example of where safety
20 can be related to operational issues, that it can be
21 related to the performance issues and business
22 objectives.
23 There is several other examples like that,
24 and we are working through it, and maybe we will come up
25 with a quantitative way of doing that. So that's some of
32
1 the work that's been ongoing. Again, both of these things
2 with Mark Tweeddale's suggestions or presentation, and
3 Dave Willette's comments on what he has been able to do,
4 treat that not as concrete stuff that needs to be done in
5 this project, but as examples of where we want and might
6 go, or a seeding policy. Okay?
7 Other activity that's been going on is that
8 even before we started this national goals project, we had
9 a couple of students working on compiling different
10 instances and putting them in a database for either our
11 research purposes or access to others. For example,
12 somebody calls and says, "I've got this chemical. Do you
13 know," for instance, "is there hazard in this chemical?"
14 And we can go to the database and tell them. Where do we
15 get these instances? Either from publicly available
16 databases that are in the public domain or from newspaper
17 reports.
18 Okay. The students go through that, sort it
19 out, develop a reasonable description of what happened
20 against it, and put that in the computer database. Right
21 now that database is available. But for today, and for
22 the symposium also the last couple of days, we had made
23 that database available, generally in the computer. If
24 any of you want to go and look through that and see what's
25 in there, again, that's a suggestion of how the database
33
1 might be set up, how access is provided, how that could be
2 used for analysis and so on. Feel free to look through
3 that. It doesn't have to do anything with this project;
4 but again, that's an idea of how things might work
5 together.
6 So those are things that we have been doing
7 up to now. There are other things going on. I don't want
8 to dwell on those anymore. But if you have questions
9 about other things or issues, feel free to bring them up.
10 What we're -- very quickly, I want to remind
11 you, or put in front of you, the vision and the goals. As
12 you go through the day today and during your
13 deliberations, keep this in your mind all the time. In
14 fact, what I would suggest -- we have some flips charts --
15 is we can write up the vision in those three goals and
16 have them made available in each one of the breakout
17 rooms. I think that would work.
18 We have each of the breakout rooms under
19 chairs. Keep this vision and these three goals in mind
20 all the time. Because you may still disagree or have
21 certain issues with the vision and the goals in that
22 report that's been issued, but I want to tell you or
23 remind you that there's been a lot of work in that. There
24 is a lot of agreement from a larger group there. Let's
25 not throw it all away. If we want to tweak some of that,
34
1 we want to add to some of that, we want to change your
2 understanding of some of that, but keep that in front of
3 you all the time.
4 What is the national chemical safety
5 vision? "Reduce chemical process accidents to zero while
6 building public trust through community interaction."
7 That's a very profound statement. Okay. Zero, that we
8 understand. But another thing you need to throw in there
9 is public trust. And that's why I keep saying that the
10 stakeholders that are here/that are not here are going to
11 listen to all of that. Okay? If you increase
12 participation, if you feel that someone is not here, you
13 feel someone needs support to get here, let me know.
14 Okay? Because if we don't open it up, the public trust
15 part, we will never have. Okay?
16 Community interaction, that's also very
17 important. In that case, I want to recognize Pam Kaster
18 for Citizens for a Cleaner Environment for taking the time
19 to come here.
20 And these three goals that I want to keep in
21 front -- that I want you to keep in front of you all the
22 time throughout the whole day, and any other activities
23 that we do, are these. Again, as I said, you may differ
24 in opinion with some of these, but we have done a lot of
25 work to get here, and there's a lot of support and energy
35
1 behind it. So keep these in front of you. You may tweak
2 it a little bit, may add to it. Keep it in front of you.
3 The national data system that we are talking
4 about, couple of things I want to point out to you. This
5 is not just instances, it's also near-misses. Because
6 ultimately, if we don't bring near-misses into the
7 equation, it's not going to be helpful.
8 Also, it has to be related to actual
9 causes. So any data system you come up with, that has to
10 be data, and we should be able to use it to establish a
11 chemical safety base line.
12 Metrics, we've already talked about that and
13 the ones that can relate to performance measures or
14 performance and business objective. And then establish
15 targeted reduction goals. Very lofty and profound goals.
16 And as I said in my earlier remarks, I'd like to come up
17 with an action plan, if possible. But I know that's not
18 very realistic; that's very ambitious; it may not be
19 possible. That's okay. But what we need to do is make
20 sure we move forward in a proper, methodical manner.
21 So with those comments, I will open it up
22 for any questions or issues that you may have. Lois.
23 MS. EPSTEIN: Sam, what is your
24 long-term time frame on this? I mean, are we supposed to
25 come close to an action plan today or is it a two-year
36
1 project?
2 MR. ROSENTHAL: Use the mic, Lois.
3 MS. EPSTEIN: I was asking what the
4 overall time frame is for the project, whether we should
5 aim for a year completion today, or is it two years or
6 what? I just don't have a sense of how long we'll be
7 working on this.
8 DR. MANNAN: Okay. We've discussed
9 this last night, too, in our Project Advisory Committee.
10 And there are two things that we need to keep in mind.
11 First of all, I said, "I would like an action plan." And
12 then a few others in the room said, "Hey, wait a minute,
13 you know. It may not move as fast. And, you know, if you
14 come up with a national plan that's not well thought out
15 and is haphazard, you do more harm than good." But then
16 there are others in the room that said, "Look, there's a
17 lot of energy and momentum and support behind this, and if
18 y'all don't accomplish something pretty soon, that support
19 and momentum is going to go away."
20 So I am going to push the whole group today
21 to go towards a national plan; but if you think that they
22 are not well thought out ideas, half-baked ideas, things
23 that we may be criticized for, then don't push yourself
24 that bad. At the minimum, what I'd like to see is that
25 you come in and say that: Well, we thought about this
37
1 action plan, but here's why we can't do it yet; and in
2 order to do it, we have to go back and create this data.
3 In terms of time frame, at least within the
4 next six months or even less, I think we should have some
5 kind of national plan.
6 MS. EPSTEIN: So you're basically
7 aiming for completion in the short-term of these work
8 groups?
9 DR. MANNAN: No. The support -- the
10 subcommittees, they will stay alive for quite a long time,
11 even after we develop the action plan. Because the
12 action plan would have to be implemented.
13 For example, let's say the data system. If
14 the action plan comes up with here's how we can establish
15 this system, here's the facts, here's how the funding is
16 going to come, here is where it's going to be housed, here
17 is how the reporting is going to be done, here is how it's
18 going to be accessed, that is the action plan. But then
19 how do we get it done?
20 So I would say the subcommittees stay alive.
21 But I would like to see between now and the next six
22 months, at least to get an action plan finalized. Maybe
23 I'm overambitious, but I would like others to comment on
24 it. Paul.
25 MR. BESWICK: I totally agree with you,
38
1 Sam. I think that out of today should come an action
2 plan, whether it be a draft action plan or an initial
3 action plan, with some rough outlines of where we're going
4 to go. I think we have to come away from today with
5 something in the very specifics.
6 The next thought is the zero accident. I
7 think it should be a goal rather than a vision. And what
8 I'm thinking of is that in terms of -- Tim and I had
9 discussion on this -- total quality management. Zero
10 defects is not a vision, it's a goal. And I think we need
11 to be thinking in those terms. And that is achieved not
12 by, you know, a specific group within an organization
13 striving for that, it's achieved by a zero defect culture
14 in the organization.
15 I'm keying off of something that Irv had
16 quoted. We should also be thinking in terms of trying to
17 instill a safety culture in the industry as the method of
18 achieving that, not just the mechanics of establishing
19 database, setting goals; but I think we should also have
20 the underlying objective here to also establish that as a
21 culture within the industry.
22 DR. MANNAN: Okay. I'm going to go to
23 Paul first and then to Jim. I mean -- I said Paul. I
24 mean Pam. It was Paul. I'm sorry.
25 MS. KASTER: Pam Kaster, Citizens for a
39
1 Cleaner Environment.
2 Quick question. Where are small businesses
3 and when are we going to pull them in?
4 DR. MANNAN: Let me answer that very
5 briefly. I think small businesses, if you want to define
6 them -- different people define in a different manner. As
7 I go around the room, there are not many in here that are
8 probably the right definition of small business, depending
9 on who you have --
10 MR. ROSENTHAL: Name one besides Dow
11 that's a small business. (Laughter)
12 DR. MANNAN: Dow is the only one that's
13 a small business.
14 MR. OVERMAN: After the sale, we will
15 be a large business. (Laughter)
16 DR. MANNAN: But if you look at some of
17 the employee institute membership -- and Bob is going to
18 disagree with me, that's fine. But if you look at some of
19 the membership, they are small businesses.
20 Another person that will join us -- or two
21 other people that are supposed to join us later in the day
22 are representatives of small businesses, Dr. Harry West,
23 who is participating in the Center, but he really
24 represents the small businesses, and Angela Summers --
25 Dr. Angela Summers. She is also representing small
40
1 business.
2 But another thing I would like to point out
3 to you...I have tried real hard, for example, to get the
4 National Propane Gas Association here, Texas Propane Gas
5 Association, and some of the others. National Association
6 of Chemical Distributors. But it's really hard to even
7 get their trade associations over here.
8 If you know somebody that's interested,
9 wants to come, even needs some travel support to come, let
10 me know. Yes, we can do everything to get them here, but
11 we can provide some subsidies to get them here. So we
12 will work with them. Okay. Jim. Now, this is Jim
13 Makris.
14 MR. OVERMAN: Yeah, Jim Makris here.
15 MR. MAKRIS: Small agency.
16 MR. OVERMAN: First, I concur. I think
17 we need to move quickly or at least with some
18 determination to get something in place. Because support
19 will dwindle if we don't show some concrete results.
20 Just a comment on goals versus vision. I
21 think we've decided at the last meeting we could spend
22 hours and hours and hours arguing what's the vision and
23 what's the goal. The key thing here is, what all of us
24 see is an environment in which the public and our workers
25 are not adversely impacted by what we do in our business.
41
1 We can make that a vision or a goal, I don't care. We do
2 need to have intermediate steps along. I said last night
3 we needed to find an excuse to celebrate, and say, you
4 know, this -- we will achieve something that's very
5 significant here and we need to celebrate that. And those
6 have to be intermediate steps. And we can call those
7 goals, milestones or whatever; the key here is to
8 demonstrate that we can go in the right direction and we
9 can make an impact on what's going on.
10 MR. MAKRIS: Jim Makris.
11 Yogi Bera once said -- you know, the creator
12 of deja vu all over again -- once said, "If you don't set
13 goals, you can't regret not reaching them." I think we
14 need to keep that in mind. Typical Yogi Bera.
15 On a small- and medium-sized enterprise --
16 Jerry may want to weigh in on this -- but we had a
17 roundtable in Washington a couple of weeks ago where I was
18 astounded at the intellect that two or three small
19 businessmen brought to the table, along with this optimal
20 organization. And I really think we need to reach out to
21 some of those folks, because they bring a very special
22 dimension to this problem. They bring a dimension of
23 conscience of small business into this picture.
24 One of the folks that was at the meeting
25 with Jerry and I there, were the third generation owner of
42
1 a chemical plant in New Jersey who carried an enormous,
2 both economic and family and social conscience to these
3 issues. And I think that those would be -- there are
4 people who have that kind of issue that we would be able
5 to represent the small- and medium-sized enterprise.
6 The third one, I think we think a little bit
7 about why some of us are here, it's because we've decided
8 -- I think we've decided; our goal says we've decided --
9 that we have a common stake in the success of this
10 undertaking. Whether you are representing an
11 environmental action group or you're representing an
12 industry or LEPC or an organization that makes money on
13 consultantships in this industry or whether you're a
14 company itself or a small organization like Dow or big
15 place like CEPPO, you have the opportunity to have some
16 influence on the direction in which we can go, and to
17 share not only -- not only the output, but share the
18 fruits of your labor in an aggregate way and show progress
19 being made.
20 I think that that means we have to move fast
21 on it. Because there are people with more selfish goals
22 that are on the edges of where we are, who want to make
23 their own points. And if we can't get ahead with that
24 process, I think we will indeed be told what to do rather
25 than be able to march to our own drum.
43
1 I think we have the right music, we have the
2 right standard, we have the right direction, we have the
3 right view. Others would probably like to do it instead.
4 And if we cannot move forward, we will be chasing them
5 rather than leading them.
6 DR. MANNAN: I second that opinion
7 completely.
8 Any other comments? Interest? Okay.
9 Comment.
10 MR. BESWICK: Sorry. Sorry. I, I
11 wanted to key off this issue of small business, and I
12 think it's something we can't lose sight of. And I'm
13 wondering whether there should be maybe a fourth
14 subcommittee dedicated to making sure that the message
15 gets out to small businesses. Or else each of the
16 existing subcommittees, when they come back with their
17 action plan, include as part of that action plan
18 specifically how -- what they're recommending will be
19 effective with small businesses.
20 DR. MANNAN: I like the second option
21 better. Okay. Because I think each step of the way you
22 need to think: Will this work for small business? Will
23 this work for small business? Or how do we get small
24 business involved in this? So let's do it the second
25 way.
44
1 Any other comments?
2 Well, then what I will do is let the
3 subcommittee chairs go and make their initial comments.
4 Try to keep them brief, because I'd really like you to
5 roll up your sleeves in the breakout groups.
6 Kari Barrett, Chair of the National Data
7 System Subcommittee.
8 MS. BARRETT: Do I come up or just
9 speak from here?
10 DR. MANNAN: You can speak from there
11 if you're more comfortable, or you can put this on.
12 MS. BARRETT: That's fine.
13 DR. MANNAN: Okay.
14 MS. BARRETT: Can everyone hear me?
15 Kari Barrett.
16 Sam, you just essentially want us to go over
17 what we hope to accomplish in our sessions this morning.
18 I had put together some materials for the
19 subcommittee really only as a starting point; as Sam has
20 said, sort of seeding thoughts. And we will, as we start
21 as a subcommittee, have an opportunity for everyone who's
22 there, to have a few minutes to offer some of those
23 seeding thoughts, to help us with our perspective, and our
24 understanding of the issue. Then we will spend just a
25 brief amount of time talking about some of the conclusions
45
1 on the subject that came out of the June meeting. Then we
2 will talk a bit about the characteristics or essential
3 features of the National Data System. This is essentially
4 the stakeholder needs assessment, what we need in this
5 database, and then spend some time talking about a few of
6 the very significant issues that we are going to face,
7 things such as how do we ensure the quality of the
8 information; some of the very real barriers that are out
9 there. Some of them may be legal or liability issues.
10 The small business issue; how we get their involvement and
11 their participation. And after that, I hope to summarize
12 the many agreements that we reach, as well as have an
13 action plan.
14 I recognize that it may be difficult -- we
15 did talk about, last night, not wanting to get bogged down
16 in the process, but really making progress. And again,
17 this morning, the need to move quickly. And I fully
18 support that, although I also recognize that the
19 consensus-building process sometimes is not always
20 efficient, as you might wish; but obviously very powerful
21 and necessary for success. So we will report back at
22 noon. Thank you.
23 DR. MANNAN: Any questions on -- any
24 questions on that issue? Okay.
25 Second thing is that what happened is that
46
1 on our second subcommittee, which is the Metrics
2 Subcommittee. Ray Skinner from OSHA is the chair or
3 facilitator of that. And Ray called me, I think Friday,
4 or was it Monday this week, and left me a message on
5 Monday. And, boy, he sounded sick. And so I called him
6 back and I said, "You better not come." And so last night
7 we looked around the Project Advisory Committee and said,
8 "Someone needs to take that baton up for him and at least
9 carry it till he's back on his feet." And Jim Overman
10 from Dow Chemical volunteered for that.
11 Jim, you want to take a few minutes to
12 explain what you want to do today? Now, you've got to
13 say --
14 MR. OVERMAN: I think I've gotten what
15 Ray has, by long distance. But at any rate, in the room,
16 the second group as related to the first group, it's
17 really the how of what we're doing. And the third group
18 is what we're going to do with the information once we get
19 it. And the middle group is really what we're going to
20 have and what we need. And I think we'll spend some time
21 looking at that. And we're going to start by having Mark
22 Tweeddale talk to us about what they do in Australia.
23 (Cell phone ringing)
24 DR. MANNAN: The perils of modern
25 technology. They will reach you anywhere you are.
47
1 MR. ROSENTHAL: We'll carry it.
2 DR. MANNAN: The third group is the --
3 are there any questions on the second group, second
4 subcommittee? Okay.
5 The third group is the Targeted Reduction
6 Goal Subcommittee. Tim Gablehouse is chair.
7 MR. GABLEHOUSE: Well, now -- we have
8 both a remarkably easy or a remarkably difficult task.
9 When you look at targeted reduction goals, it's obvious
10 that the goals can come in sort of three areas: People,
11 process and products. It's also very obvious that to be
12 meaningful, these goals have to translate into what you're
13 going to say to the various audiences that you're going to
14 communicate those to.
15 For example -- and this is not something I
16 came up with on my own. But obviously you have to be able
17 to relate reduction of accidents to behavioral things, you
18 have to relate them to engineering items, and so forth.
19 The goals have to be relevant to the audience. That
20 means we have to be able to have a local expression or a
21 small business expression of what amounts to national
22 goals.
23 So I anticipate we're going to spend quite a
24 bit of time just getting our arms around what these goals
25 all look like, what their characteristics ought to be,
48
1 before we get into the idea of what they are. So it
2 should be an interesting session.
3 DR. MANNAN: Questions, issues on
4 that? James.
5 MR. MAKRIS: This morning when we heard
6 Herb Fox talk about -- we heard Herb talk about his views
7 as a CEO of a company, what kinds of things he looked at
8 and he looks for, we traditionally have a fairly narrow
9 view of incidents and injuries and that kind of thing.
10 And really, my view is that we need to be looking at the
11 greater -- the greater company, the greater nation, the
12 greater whatever, and look very broadly and start to
13 measure things we haven't perhaps measured before as a
14 safety professional. And I think if we do that, if we
15 begin to establish a way how you can measure the
16 effectiveness of an organization and how well an
17 organization behaves, then I think we're going to be
18 getting on to where we need to be, and we will really have
19 some metrics to improve things, and be able to spend money
20 where we need to spend money to improve particular
21 situations.
22 DR. MANNAN: Thanks.
23 What I'd like to do now is -- unless there
24 are any other comments -- I don't want to shut anyone up
25 that wants to speak on anything, because that's the whole
49
1 idea. Okay.
2 Oh, Phil.
3 MR. COGAN: Phil Cogan from the
4 Chemical Safety Board.
5 I think I would like to join Irv and Irv's
6 feeling that, I'm still wrestling with the three topics
7 and the way they relate in a unified way to the goal or to
8 the vision. And I think there's a -- although we can't
9 eliminate all overlap, I think there is -- there's a fair
10 amount of overlap, that means that we're going to be -- in
11 the precious hours that we have here today, we're going to
12 be duplicating efforts somewhat in the groups. And I
13 would like just for a moment to reconsider whether the
14 defined areas for each of the groups might be further
15 refined in order to make them distinct and different and
16 very focused. Because in one day, you can't -- you can't
17 afford to waste time by duplicating efforts, when you have
18 the talent pool here that we have.
19 DR. MANNAN: I hear what you say --
20 Jim, I'm going to come to you in a minute, but let me give
21 my thoughts on that.
22 I hear what you say, Phil, but let me
23 suggest this: That I have no problem in refining, and
24 more precisely, defining those goals. But I think that
25 can be done in a smaller group more fastly and more easily
50
1 than in a larger group. Let the smaller group do it and
2 report back to the larger group that that's how --
3 MR. COGAN: Let me -- let me -- I agree
4 that that's possible. But if this were a multi-day
5 session, if you did it in smaller groups, and reported
6 back, and then the groups could act on that. But if you
7 don't do it in a larger session, you're going to end up
8 having independently-developed topics. And these three
9 groups need to be coordinated so that the synergy will be
10 there.
11 If we didn't do it -- I agree also that
12 committees don't define -- don't design very good animals,
13 and large committees do an even worse job. But in the
14 time we have available, if we don't do it together so that
15 each one carves out its own unique nitch, then we are
16 going to risk going over the same turf. And I will shut
17 up now.
18 DR. MANNAN: Jim.
19 MR. OVERMAN: I would just like to
20 respond.
21 I think we sat at the Advisory Committee
22 meeting last night and discussed these various issues.
23 Again, sort of to summarize, that the first group is
24 looking at the how; that's the structure, the database,
25 how that database functions. The second group is going to
51
1 be looking at what we're going to be measuring; what those
2 measurements mean. The third group is going to be looking
3 at how we take those measurements and structure those into
4 a goal. Now, that's the design that we've decided on last
5 night.
6 The other thing we decided is that the
7 original agenda, if you will notice, said that we would
8 come back together and make our reports and quit. An hour
9 for each group. And we said no, each group would come
10 back and spend about 15 minutes describing what they did,
11 show what they put up on their flip chart. The whole
12 group assembled would have a chance to comment on this.
13 One thing for sure, we are not tied down to
14 this division of labor beyond today. But we didn't feel
15 that we should change it prior to this meeting because
16 people had already been assigned groups, they were already
17 in a group, they had already started some stuff; and to
18 redesign the structure of this group today, prior to this
19 meeting, would be a mistake and wouldn't be fair to the
20 people that worked in June.
21 It's my personal belief that when we move
22 into the implementation of these infant action plans that
23 we're going to come up with, we will find that there are
24 better ways to organize. But we decided we couldn't spend
25 a lot of time on redesigning the organization; we need to
52
1 get out there and see what the action plans look like and
2 discuss it.
3 So I agree with you; I just don't think now
4 is the time to do it.
5 MR. GABLEHOUSE: I just want to say one
6 thing in response to your description of the third group.
7 MR. COGAN: I don't know, Tim, if
8 that's -- that doesn't seem to describe what I think the
9 third group was doing. Does it, Tim?
10 MR. GABLEHOUSE: It's clear that it
11 will be a dynamic process. So let's -- we beat ourselves
12 up on this issue at great length last night.
13 MR. COGAN: Then I'm sorry to prolong
14 it.
15 MR. GABLEHOUSE: I am very sensitive to
16 what you're saying because, I mean, I tend to agree. On
17 the other hand, I frankly don't know how to improve the
18 process at the moment. Because we could probably sit here
19 and beat ourselves up for hours, trying to figure out what
20 the three groups ought to do. I just don't see a way out
21 of the process other than sitting down, working for
22 awhile, come back together and see if we get smart.
23 I don't think any of us can predict where
24 these three groups are going to go this morning. I mean,
25 I really -- I don't have -- I mean, I have not sat down
53
1 and written out the report of the group back to the main
2 embodiments. I'm not sure where it's going to go. It
3 will be very entertaining.
4 MR. MAKRIS: I think there's some
5 advantage to the tensions that will be created by groups
6 saying, "I wonder what those other guys are doing?" That
7 will bring questions into a more precise focus, than if
8 they are all in the room and you debate it. You know, you
9 can sort of can put them on a separate chart: This is
10 what we hope one is doing and this is what we hope two is
11 doing as we in three are doing this. I think rather than
12 arguing it, you have to say, "We don't know." And that
13 will become the focus upon which one could then -- that
14 can maybe just start to see where the differences and
15 where the similarities emerge.
16 You know, there is no perfect process. The
17 design of meetings probably began 3- or 4000 years ago in
18 China, and we haven't figured out how to do it yet; but
19 some day we will.
20 MR. BESWICK: Why don't we just see
21 what the groups can do this morning? Why don't we set a
22 goal of having all the group presentations over lunch.
23 Like Jim says, make use of our lunch. And then we have
24 the afternoon to refine things, put it back into the
25 groups for the afternoon. Maybe restructure the groups'
54
1 objectives a little, if that's appropriate.
2 DR. MANNAN: No problem. No problem.
3 Okay. I'm going to go ahead and break -- go -- break the
4 groups into breakout sessions. let me remind you of one
5 thing I want the breakout chairs to take care of. One is
6 pass around a sign-up sheet. And I want the sign-up sheet
7 to have the name, phone number, fax and e-mail. E-mail is
8 very important, because the chair and us, we would like to
9 communicate to you via e-mail. Because that's faster,
10 much easier and becomes simpler.
11 The second thing is to come back with an
12 action plan, if you can; but also come back with
13 recommendations of whether or not your subcommittee is
14 right. Do you have the right people? Do you have
15 recommendations for other people that need to be added?
16 Maybe they are already in the larger group we have, okay,
17 that need to be coached or to make sure that they attend
18 these meetings; or maybe they are out there, but they are
19 not aware of. Come back with some recommendations of what
20 people you want to have.
21 So with that, the breakout groups: Breakout
22 group one, Kari Barrett's group, is in this board room.
23 That doesn't mean that they have higher status. It just
24 happens --
25 MR. COGAN: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
55
1 DR. MANNAN: Break out two is in
2 1011A.
3 MR. CHALUPKA: 1011 is one breakout
4 group. 1011A is the other one.
5 DR. MANNAN: Okay, 1011 and 1011A. But
6 this is not a pretty big complex, so you will be able to
7 find it. Then three is the next room.
8 Okay. We will meet back here at lunch.
9
10 (Recessed at 9:35 a.m.)
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
56
1 LUNCHEON PROCEEDINGS
2 DR. MANNAN: Well, folks, while you're
3 still enjoying your lunch, let's get started. We had
4 decided that we were going to have a working lunch, so if
5 you will stop your side-bar conversations and direct your
6 attention over here, I would appreciate that.
7 Couple of things. First let me check and
8 see if we have any schedule constraints. When does --
9 does anyone have to leave at 4 o'clock? Does anyone have
10 to leave earlier than 4 o'clock? Okay. Well, let's shoot
11 for 4 o'clock as the time when everything should wind up;
12 and if one or two have to leave a little bit earlier than
13 that, that's okay. Okay? So let's shoot for 4 o'clock.
14 Another thing is that, you know, these
15 subcommittees went into their subcommittee activities,
16 and from my trips to the rooms, I could see that they've
17 been doing a lot of work. And as they present their stuff
18 and people have things they want to raise, please use the
19 microphone, because Judy here is otherwise going to have a
20 big -- a lot of trouble recording everything because of
21 the noise with the forks and everything. And we'll try to
22 keep the noise down; but at the same time, use the
23 microphone, plus speak your name before you start
24 speaking.
25 So with that, let me ask Kari Barrett, the
57
1 chair of the first subcommittee to come up. Kari, you can
2 come up here.
3 MS. BARRETT: Well, actually I
4 thought --
5 Kari Barrett. If I could stand over here,
6 I'm just going to really work from the flip-chart
7 material.
8 We were looking at the database, and we have
9 some notes here, and I would just ask anybody on the
10 subcommittee, if there is an important point that I
11 missed, to please speak up.
12 But essentially, we went back to talking
13 about the purpose of the database, having that clear in
14 our mind, and picking out the very critical components
15 that -- naturally we were trying to call it a repository
16 at this point. There was some discussion about the
17 connotations that database may have, and so we were trying
18 to bring it back to calling it a repository, and one that
19 is on incidents and near-misses. That allows for
20 tracking; change with time, to understand the nature and
21 cause of chemical releases; to lead to improvements in
22 chemical safety; and to understand the impact of community
23 interaction. So all of this is somehow tied to the
24 purpose of undertaking this activity.
25 Then we wanted to talk a bit about the
58
1 scope. And I guess you could look at these as our --
2 again, our agreements that this would be a national
3 repository at this time. Certainly in the future, it
4 could be broadened to be international, but we're just
5 focusing, right now, on national.
6 We have, as part of our scope, looking to
7 create perhaps a single report that would meet both your
8 regulatory obligations, with regard to reporting these
9 type of incidents, and may go further certainly than that
10 with other relevant information that would need to be
11 captured.
12 As a starting point of what is captured, we
13 said it has to be tied to chemical or process involvement
14 that result, or could have reasonably resulted -- that's
15 the near-miss phrase -- in a fire, explosion or accidental
16 release. And when we defined what processes it includes:
17 Manufacturer, storage, transportation and use. The broad
18 spectrum process. And we have not put any limits right
19 now on chemicals; we've said "all" chemicals.
20 So these were our agreements as a
21 subcommittee.
22 Some of the next steps are path board action
23 items. One is to identify and develop relationships with
24 all organizations that collect data; at the same time,
25 promote, during this process, that the information that
59
1 they collect is more accessible to the public. We want to
2 review the assessments of current data collection.
3 Because we recognize that so much work has gone on
4 already, we want to build off of that. We know we don't
5 need to start new there, but we do need to have an
6 understanding of the current data collections, and it's
7 for the purpose of identifying useable data, as well as
8 beginning to get an idea of how data could be integrated,
9 and also, of course, to then identify whatever limitations
10 or gaps that need to be addressed.
11 Then we will look to determine the
12 repository elements and begin the design process, and
13 identify and address barriers. And we recognize that
14 there are some real significant barriers that are out
15 there: Political, bureaucratic, legal, financial, all of
16 these things. And it's to identify and to address these
17 barriers toward the creation of a single database.
18 So that, in summary, is a summary of both
19 the agreements that we came to and the path board that we
20 saw as a subcommittee, where we need to head.
21 And I don't know if we're going to go
22 through also committee reviews first and then sort of have
23 general discussion or what's the process.
24 DR. MANNAN: Okay. Let's go to the
25 second subcommittee.
60
1 MR. OVERMAN: Jim Overman with Dow.
2 I'd like to thank everybody that was in the
3 room working on this because we do work hard.
4 The first thing we did, we looked at our
5 little goal down here for this group. It said, "Establish
6 metrics that relate safety performance and business
7 objectives." A lot of discussion about that for a few
8 minutes. We would like to change that to "stakeholder
9 objectives." This tends to be very narrow, and we want it
10 to be broader than that.
11 The next thing we did was spend a good hour,
12 hour and 15 minutes brainstorming numerators and then
13 brainstorming denominators, and then separately. It was
14 an interesting exercise. I didn't bring those in. We've
15 got a wall full of enumerators and denominators that we'd
16 like to discuss with group one as the kind of information
17 we might like to put in. We haven't prioritized those
18 yet. I will get to that in a minute.
19 Our action plan then is, first, there's no
20 single answer to this question, but we want to set up a
21 matrix of these enumerators and denominators, and we'll go
22 through and we'll eliminate the ones that just don't make
23 sense. Like number of chickens divided by number of
24 apples; that's not going to make it. We'll determine
25 which of the cells are meaningful ratios, then we will
61
1 prioritize and relate the prioritization to group three,
2 and play catch-ball with group one. In other words, the
3 priorities are not meaningful unless group three thinks
4 they are things that need to be part of the national
5 safety goal. And we'll play catch-ball with group one to
6 see how -- whether the information is going to be
7 available in the database. It should be.
8 The matrix that was essentially looked at
9 was, if you draw on this axis, the ease with which you get
10 the data. From very easy up here to very hard down here
11 at this corner. And on this axis is how critical or how
12 valuable is the data. Do we not care at all it has no
13 value or it's something we've really got to have?
14 And as we go through this matrix and look at
15 these cells that are practical and meaningful, we thought
16 we ought to prioritize them by saying: Is it something
17 that's real easy to get? If it's real easy to get, i.e.,
18 we already have it and it's very critical, it's obvious
19 it's something that we want to do. If it's very hard to
20 get and nobody cares, we are not going to waste our time
21 and money. Okay? The issue comes over here: If it's
22 something we find is very critical to have to reach our
23 goal and measure our goal, but it's very hard to get.
24 And those are the issues that we think we're
25 going to have to look for funding and help on how we get
62
1 that data. And that's going to be part -- this, this acts
2 as a sort of a group one function. I'm sorry. This acts
3 as -- the ease of which you get it is sort of a group one
4 function. And the input from group three is going to tell
5 us an awful lot whether the data is critical. So that's
6 what we did.
7 Does anybody in the group have anything to
8 add?
9 JOHN: So, Jim, basically what you did
10 was shift the risk from group two to group one and group
11 three? (Laughter)
12 MR. OVERMAN: Absolutely. Absolutely.
13 And the rest of us, there is a golf course -- an A&M golf
14 course. It's great. Group two is going to meet after
15 lunch at the golf course. If y'all will give us the
16 answers, we'll work from there.
17 John, you didn't have to be so obvious.
18 We thought we were being subtle about it.
19 MR. GABLEHOUSE: Okay. I'm Tim
20 Gablehouse. This is group three.
21 First off, I want to thank the group. We
22 had an excellent conversation. I think one of the
23 highlights of that conversation was the fact that was
24 pretty much absent any particular sort of advocacy. I
25 mean people spoke from not necessarily the chair they were
63
1 holding, but actually looked at broader objectives.
2 The first thing we tried to figure out is
3 what in the world kind of characteristics there ought to
4 be for target and reduction goals, and we can add accident
5 reduction goals. And after dancing through the question
6 of local versus national, what's relevant, what's
7 meaningful, how you communicate it, especially owing to --
8 Where is our vision statement?
9 UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Right there.
10 MR. GABLEHOUSE: When you've got,
11 "While building trust through community interaction,"
12 being an important component of that. We recognize that
13 from a multiple audience's point of view, credibility,
14 behavior versus policy. In other words, lot of companies
15 have great policy statements, but when you look at
16 accidents, they are frequently caused by behavior
17 inconsistent with the policy statement.
18 Progress. In other words, the trends. We
19 look at reduction of risk as three -- in three component
20 sort of groups. People, internal and external; process;
21 and products, including the concept of stewardship.
22 We made sure there was a picture of this
23 board, so it doesn't get lost.
24 Okay. Going to the people, process and
25 products point of view...there are a tremendous number of
64
1 interrelationships. And everywhere you see a double
2 arrow, that's meant to imply a feedback process, that I'll
3 talk about in a second, because that's where you get an
4 interface with the data groups. Okay.
5 In the people side, obviously you have
6 internal audiences and external audiences. You've got all
7 the standard process/safety management sorts of things
8 here: Training, process control procedures, management of
9 change procedures, so forth.
10 Externally you've got lots of communication
11 issues. Okay. For example, companies ought to look at
12 their internal accident potentials here, and you have a
13 communication of that process to the community, where you
14 analyze the risk that that presents to the community, you
15 communicate training/prevention/response issues. You
16 might enhance product risk communication, based on an
17 evaluation of the routine risks associated with a product
18 when it's used downstream. That's part of the product
19 stewardship idea.
20 You have got in the center this idea of
21 establishing both an entrenched and institutionalized
22 corporate safety vision. That has to be communicated
23 internally, that has to be communicated externally, has to
24 be communicated to the regulatory folks. Because what
25 we're looking at there is a transition between command and
65
1 control and to form a performance-based regulation.
2 You've also got a communication loop that has to go to
3 suppliers, distributors and other end users.
4 Now, obviously, I grossly summarized the
5 conversation that we had at great length, but part of the
6 idea here is to create an elephant that we could eat in
7 bite-sized pieces.
8 Okay. Now, in order to evaluate where you
9 are on any of this, you require -- you know, you need to
10 have some data, based on performance and otherwise. And
11 so effectively what we're looking at is the classic
12 feedback goal -- loop rather. Having a goal, you measure
13 your progress towards that goal, you measure your outcomes
14 and make adjustments. Okay? So it's a standard sort of
15 feedback loop.
16 Accident metrics certainly influence whether
17 or not you're making progress towards the goals and what
18 that progress looks like. And the metrics also are
19 demonstration of your progress to the goals, for
20 communication to these external players.
21 So it's not so much a matter of wanting to
22 have any specific set of data here as it is for each
23 enterprise to go through an evaluation of their people
24 issues, their process issues and their product issues from
25 an accident reduction point of view.
66
1 We'll use one of the examples we used in the
2 conversation, which has to do with Pam's fire truck, just
3 to give you some flesh. Okay? Through a process that
4 evaluated what the risks were associated with the products
5 and processes in the local community, communication of
6 that, both internally and externally, okay, it was clear
7 that the appropriate response was buying a fire truck for
8 purposes of enhancing response in the case of an
9 accident. Okay? That's how this feedback two-way
10 communication process works. Okay?
11 So, grossly simplified, but there we are.
12 Thank you.
13 UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Good job
14 (Applause).
15 DR. MANNAN: Well, we got it all done,
16 so let's go home. Not really. Now is when the real work
17 begins, so let's start taking discussion on any one of the
18 three or all three together.
19 MR. ROSENTHAL: Jim, you're going to
20 set a national goal.
21 DR. MANNAN: Irv, for Judy.
22 MR. ROSENTHAL: Yes. You're going to
23 set a national goal. How are you going to know whether
24 you're successful or not?
25 MR. GABLEHOUSE: I set a national
67
1 goal or --
2 DR. MANNAN: Tim Gablehouse.
3 MR. GABLEHOUSE: She knows who I am. I
4 already talked to her. I mean, she knows who I am.
5 (Laughter)
6 Going to set a national goal that is based
7 upon saying to an enterprise, okay, you as an enterprise
8 need to evaluate the risks associated with your processes
9 and your products. Okay. You need to communicate in a
10 feedback two-way fashion your vision of your corporate
11 enterprise safety objectives. You need to measure your
12 progress towards this vision, based on the collection of
13 data appropriate to what you think your accident potential
14 and your product use potential is. Okay. And that needs
15 to occur. And if you do that correctly, and you have this
16 communication, not only are the external audiences more
17 comfortable with your progress towards those goals, but
18 your internal audiences are comfortable with the progress
19 goals, be they shareholders, employees, or whatever, and
20 the regulatory agencies are comfortable.
21 And it's not a matter -- it is -- it is very
22 definitely not a matter of saying to that enterprise: We
23 expect you to achieve a numeric outcome. Because, in
24 general, it's very difficult, we view, to explain how that
25 numeric outcome necessarily tells a community or
68
1 regulatory agency that you're making reasonable progress
2 in reduction of risk.
3 Reduction of risk -- I mean, one of the --
4 one of the things we ultimately decided we wanted to do
5 was change our name. All risks and solutions to those
6 risks are a local issue, fundamentally. I mean, they are
7 in the eyes of the beholder. I mean, what is -- what is
8 an important risk in the Houston Ship Channel is different
9 than an important risk in Brush.
10 MR. ROSENTHAL: Irv Rosenthal back
11 again.
12 I still come back to this: We're going to
13 do a national program. Okay. It's going to have local
14 results, but it's a national program on which we are going
15 to spend resources and need guidance on our success. How
16 will I be able to measure how successful we are in going a
17 particular way or how successful we have been? What is it
18 that I will be able to use and hold up, other than my
19 opinion or statement -- nothing personal, Kari -- that
20 responsible care is working; you ran through that problem,
21 you had to get numbers.
22 There are lots of programs that go through
23 activities, all of which are good. How do we end up being
24 able to put up some more objective evidence that this
25 national program, to get all risks managed locally -- I am
69
1 not saying what it ought to be -- is working?
2 MR. OVERMAN: Now I want to know the
3 answer.
4 MR. GABLEHOUSE: Yeah, that's group
5 number two's problem, Irv. No. (Laughter)
6 The way you demonstrate that is, is in two
7 ways. First off, hopefully, you have some empiric data as
8 to accident rates nationwide. Okay? But, more
9 realistically, the important factor is whether or not
10 people like Pam, and other local folks, fundamentally
11 continue to pressure the agency towards a command and
12 control approach because they are unhappy, okay, with the
13 performance of the industries in their area.
14 I don't think that we -- I mean, within our
15 conversation, I don't think we believe that there was a
16 single number, or even a grouping of numbers, that would
17 make that case objectively. In our sense, it's a matter
18 of recognizing that whether or not Pam's happy or I'm
19 happy with the company down the street is going to depend
20 on this relationship more so than whether or not there is
21 a command-and-control program that exists. I mean, part
22 of our conversation was frankly sometimes
23 command-and-control programs are as much an impediment to
24 the perception that you've got a risk reduction, okay,
25 than they are, in fact, an advantage.
70
1 So we are overtly suggesting, okay, that
2 complete reliance for demonstration of the performance of
3 a national program on some sort of national metric has got
4 a lot of limitations. And because we wanted to implement
5 the second half of this thing, okay, in fact we are
6 relying on entities and enterprises to create a
7 relationship at the local level that conveys the message
8 to the national regulators that, in fact, they feel as
9 though risk has been reduced.
10 MR. ROSENTHAL: You could do a survey.
11 MR. GABLEHOUSE: You could do a survey.
12 I got a lot of hands on that one.
13 DR. MANNAN: Let's take it from Kathy
14 then back to --
15 MS. JONES: Kathy Jones.
16 So, Tim, do you ever see the articulation of
17 some targeted reduction goals for the nation, you know, by
18 the year 2002 such-and-such? We're shooting for
19 such-and-such? No?
20 MR. GABLEHOUSE: What I see is -- can
21 you hear me or do we need to continue?
22 What I see is a national statement that says
23 each enterprise should have requirement to do that kind of
24 statement, to their local entities, and that they ought to
25 have some position on the issues of: What are they doing
71
1 with their suppliers, their distributors and their users?
2 I mean, if I had to put a lot more meat on the bones here,
3 you'd probably say something like -- you'd probably say
4 something like, you know, an enterprise that manufactures
5 X, Y, Z has some obligation to understand what accidents
6 occur in the use of X, Y, Z; and to evaluate whether or
7 not they are providing enough information to the users of
8 X, Y, Z about the safe use of that product, okay, rather
9 than saying: We're all going to be happy if accident
10 rates go down five, or whatever the number is. Because, I
11 mean, when you get down to local levels, that's not as
12 important as whether or not I've had an accident in this
13 local facility; or my fireman knows what in the world
14 they're doing if they have to respond at this location.
15 I mean, there's an inherent weakness in sort
16 of big-scale, national numeric kinds of goals, because
17 they don't necessarily apply in all the local areas.
18 DR. MANNAN: Let's start here. Go to
19 Paul Beswick and then Bob Smerko.
20 MR. BESWICK: Paul Beswick.
21 Yes, I think that's it. The bottom line
22 was, we didn't feel that it was productive, appropriate,
23 whatever, to set specific accident numbers, percentage
24 reduction numbers. We felt that the way to approach this
25 was to set goals relative to the people, process,
72
1 products, influencing the elements that would result in
2 accident reduction; and then the metrics from team two
3 would produce the measures that we were achieving those
4 goals.
5 And, also, I mean, the important issue here,
6 too, we can't lose sight of are the people, the public,
7 the community. We want to have a feedback loop from the
8 community such that we perceive they're receiving the
9 message and agreeing with our success. Because it's one
10 thing to pump numbers out saying, "We've reduced accidents
11 by such-and-such;" if the community doesn't feel safer, we
12 haven't achieved our objective.
13 DR. MANNAN: Let's go to Bob Smerko
14 then Jim Makris.
15 MR. SMERKO: Bob Smerko.
16 So, Tim, you basically eliminated goal
17 three?
18 MR. GABLEHOUSE: No. In fact, these
19 are all targeted action reduction goals within the context
20 of each entity and enterprise. I mean, you're going to
21 have a vision. And driven by that vision will be process
22 safety changes in terms of products, your internal
23 processes, and the way you communicate internally and
24 externally.
25 Okay. We did not -- we did not want to come
73
1 up with a number that said five or 10 percent, because
2 it's fundamentally meaningless in the local context. If I
3 have an accident at my local facility, okay, whether or
4 not there's a grand national trend, you know, is not
5 nearly as important.
6 MR. SMERKO: Then are you changing the
7 vision?
8 MR. GABLEHOUSE: No, we're not changing
9 the vision at all. What we're saying is, we have this
10 trend reducing -- you know, the accidents to zero is, in
11 fact, a national vision. But you got to build the public
12 trust through community interaction that you're achieving
13 that process. Okay. And the only way you can demonstrate
14 that you're achieving that process, that you're making
15 progress, is by emphasis on the public trust component.
16 Which is why you get all these feedback arrows in here.
17 Because otherwise, otherwise if I have an accident in my
18 local, and Pam has one, how else does the public or
19 anybody else evaluate whether you have made progress? I
20 mean, I have gone three years without an accident.
21 Suddenly I have one. Okay. Am I still making progress,
22 or does that one accident mean that I have blown up the
23 entire national vision?
24 And the answer is, well no, it doesn't mean
25 you've blown up the entire national vision if, in fact,
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1 you've established, you know, through communication, the
2 fact that you've got stuff you're doing to make progress
3 to zero. One accident does not blow you up, okay, if, in
4 fact, you've institutionalized the rest of these
5 components.
6 And that's where we broke this up very
7 intentionally into people, process and products sorts of
8 goals. Because we think that they are very different and
9 we think that's a very key component of what -- of how to
10 separate the elephant into bite-sized pieces.
11 MR. SMERKO: Two more questions, Sam.
12 DR. MANNAN: Just two?
13 MR. SMERKO: Just two. Does this apply
14 to all chemical incidents?
15 MR. GABLEHOUSE: It could.
16 MR. SMERKO: It could?
17 MR. GABLEHOUSE: It could. The point
18 is, each company, each enterprise has to look at what
19 metrics they believe are useful to them in doing this
20 process.
21 MR. SMERKO: Okay. The last question
22 is, is this responsible care expanded to all places where
23 chemicals are being used? Is that the basic result, if
24 this would be implemented?
25 MR. GABLEHOUSE: I don't think it's a
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1 matter of responsible care or any specific program,
2 because I think it's a site-specific issue. I think it's
3 a site-specific question. What's going to be important in
4 Brush is not what's going to be important in the ship
5 channel, it's not what's going to be important in Chicago
6 necessarily.
7 The issue is the process of communication --
8 having the vision, how you communicate that vision, and
9 how you react back and forth on those communication
10 lines.
11 MR. SMERKO: But responsible care is a
12 process.
13 MR. GABLEHOUSE: I agree.
14 MR. SMERKO: And this sounds like
15 responsible care.
16 MR. GABLEHOUSE: Yeah, but I don't want
17 to finger one process necessarily.
18 MR. MAKRIS: We're walking down the
19 wrong street when you say that, because what we want to do
20 is stop saying "responsible care" is the process that
21 creates safety. We want to say that responsible care and
22 industry initiatives all contribute to safety. And if we
23 start to put everything under "responsible care," we're
24 breaking the fundamental rule we agreed upon in June,
25 which is, that everybody has a contribution to make and no
76
1 one can claim it all. No one has the brilliance and the
2 initiative of starting the process that's going to drive
3 us all toward safety; but indeed, everybody has some
4 contribution to make.
5 And you start giving it a "responsible care"
6 name, just like if you give it a process safety management
7 name, or you give it an EPA R&P name, you give it -- you
8 are starting to get into trouble. You give it to EDF and
9 say, "It's their driving of information to the public that
10 can take all the credit," we have to stop that. That's
11 the problem. That's the problem.
12 Everybody wants to take -- and one of the
13 remarkable things about the six or eight people that met
14 in Tim's group is that no one got proprietary about their
15 contribution. Everybody was far more proprietary about
16 other people's contributions. We were all talking about
17 what Pam needed, we were all talking about what the --
18 what other folks wanted, and no one said, "Yeah, but you
19 got to do it the R&P way," or, "You've got to do it the
20 responsible care way." That dooms the process, Bob.
21 I love you and I have worked with you
22 forever. But when you want to put it around responsible
23 care expanded -- (laughter) -- I'm not done yet. You're
24 going the wrong way.
25 MR. GABLEHOUSE: He's not done
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1 yet.
2 MR. MAKRIS: The observation that I
3 wanted to make -- and it just occurred to me as Tim was
4 just laying this statement out -- is think about the
5 community meeting that happens, from the stuff that Tim's
6 just put on the board. Think about the community meeting,
7 the community meeting about the plant which says, you
8 know, "We've reduced our consequences because we've
9 changed the chemical. We've changed the quantity." And
10 the plant that says, "We're the fire department. We now
11 have a better notification system." And the fire
12 department that says, "If there's a release, we're better
13 able to deal with this chemical." And the hospital that
14 says, "And if they are -- got exposed, we know how to deal
15 with them."
16 I mean, what you've just done is you've said
17 -- you haven't eliminated the accident and it's not a
18 zero; but there are so many people who are working
19 together toward preventing the accident at this one place,
20 around this one substance in this one process for these --
21 this set of people and for this product, that you've made
22 a gain.
23 And, you know, I've just been trying -- you
24 stimulated it when you started talking about these
25 interactions. Just think of what the people who come to
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1 the public meeting bring to it and what they say, and
2 where are you at the end of the -- at the end of the day
3 on that discussion.
4 DR. MANNAN: Bob, can you give it to
5 Mark Tweeddale first. He's been patiently waiting.
6 DR. TWEEDDALE: Mark Tweeddale.
7 UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: No, Makris.
8 DR. TWEEDDALE: You want me to change
9 my name?
10 It seems to me that if we're looking at
11 national risk reduction goals in the chemical industry,
12 that we'd be using some of the indicators, some of the
13 ratios that would be generated as feasible by the second
14 group. And those you can say -- well, say, for example,
15 it's how many pigs per feather or some ratio that has
16 meaning to you. That one obviously doesn't. Then you may
17 say, well, that's clearly too high. It's a matter of
18 concern. Maybe for sake of argument, number of fatalities
19 per year or the number of incidents per installations;
20 some units like that. You may say we need to reduce
21 those, because the overall picture is too high. But that
22 does not enable you actually at the plant level or the
23 company level to say what you need to do immediately,
24 because there are different performance indicators on the
25 individual plants.
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1 And when you get that individual plant --
2 say, for example, the problem nationally has been there
3 have been too many incidents which result in fatalities.
4 Now, your individual plant may not have had a fatality,
5 and you may not expect to have a fatality. But what
6 you're really trying to control is your risk of having a
7 fatality. And you can't measure that by counting
8 fatalities you haven't had. And so there are quite
9 different indicators you need at that level.
10 MR. GABLEHOUSE: Right.
11 DR. TWEEDDALE: And so it's one thing
12 for us to set up these targeted risk reduction goals,
13 which help the industry, as a whole, help the regulators
14 see where emphasis needs to be placed; but how you
15 actually set about taking the action at the -- within the
16 individual company or the individual facility will depend
17 on the site-specific and the process-specific hazards and
18 their indicators.
19 MR. GABLEHOUSE: Exactly.
20 MR. BESWICK: I keep straying back to
21 the analogy of total quality management and zero tolerance
22 for defects. This is a philosophy. I think we see it as
23 a zero tolerance for accidents. And how it's manifested
24 at different facilities will be different. They're going
25 to analyze the processes and people they may have in
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1 place, and look for ways to continuously improve. And
2 whether they have had an accident or not, they are always
3 looking for ways to improve the process, improve the
4 communications; like you're saying, to reduce the risk. I
5 think that's how we're seeing it.
6 DR. MANNAN: Bob and then Jim Overman.
7 MR. SMERKO: Bob Smerko.
8 "Responsible care" was with a small "r" and
9 a small "c." (Applause).
10 MR. OVERMAN: I guess I'm going to try
11 to express some group two issues with this.
12 Some of our discussions, I think there would
13 be a tendency to agree that a lot of the issues that will
14 result in change and will -- are micro issues that are
15 facility specific, regardless of the type of facilities.
16 And a lot of what your group talked about fall into that
17 category.
18 At the same time, we would say that there is
19 this, this vision, this national global vision that
20 encompasses all of these facilities that says, "We're not
21 going to get anybody hurt or have any negative impacts."
22 We would say that we need to somehow measure
23 the fact that we're approaching that vision. I used the
24 comment last night, we need to set some milestones out
25 there and all get together and pop champagne bottles when
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1 we reach each milestone.
2 The process that your group described, I
3 think, is very much a process. I'm not sure where we stop
4 and pop the champagne corks with your process. I think
5 your process is a method for achieving, or one of several
6 methods for achieving that vision.
7 So the metric group would go back and say,
8 "That's super. Now what do you want us to do? What's the
9 output of the metric group as a result of what your group
10 said?"
11 What we said was, okay, tell us what's
12 important to measure, tell us how important it is to
13 measure. Group one, tell us whether we can measure it or
14 whether it's just barely possible to measure or whether we
15 already have it. And we as a group will come up with
16 those measurements that will tell us when we're there or
17 how close we are. And hopefully, at the same time, if we
18 look at it from a national level, people at the local and
19 regional level are going to say, "Well, what are you doing
20 to contribute to that?" Or, "What are you doing to hinder
21 that?" So I think that's where we need to go from here.
22 Now, I'm not sure that the division of labor
23 is appropriate the way we've got it set up, and we need to
24 decide that later. But we need to leave here, again, with
25 a set of firm steps that we need to take to get there; at
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1 least till the next meeting.
2 DR. MANNAN: We need to come to Irv.
3 But, Jim, I think what you were saying while
4 I was holding my peace, while you-all are talking about
5 these things, I think you basically -- I thought for
6 awhile you were saying something that I was also thinking,
7 that I don't see any quantification in this anywhere. Is
8 that what you're saying?
9 MR. OVERMAN: Yeah.
10 MR. GABLEHOUSE: That's right there,
11 isn't it?
12 MR. OVERMAN: When I go tell my next
13 door neighbor, "We're improving chemical safety in the
14 United States," and he says, "Show me," and I can say, "We
15 have had an incredible meeting in which we analyzed the
16 risk of our local LECP," and somehow there's going to be
17 sort of an empty feeling in my gut, or vacuum there, when
18 I use that as the answer.
19 DR. MANNAN: So it's pretty fuzzy and
20 not quantitative.
21 MR. ROSENTHAL: I see two goals
22 basically. One maybe leads to the other. The one goal
23 may be to measure reduction in accidents related to
24 chemical processing. The other goal may be to increase
25 the number or -- the number of local community advisory
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1 councils or the number of LEPCs that feel that
2 satisfactory measures are being taken with regard to their
3 interests; but they are not necessarily the same.
4 MR. MAKRIS: Nor are they exclusive.
5 MR. ROSENTHAL: No, nor are they --
6 no, I didn't say they were -- they're not at all
7 exclusive. Because I think, over the long run, achieving
8 the first goal will probably require doing the, the
9 first. You can't have the one without the other.
10 However, from a measurement operational point of view,
11 they have to be separated out.
12 If I knew what you were doing when we were
13 in group two, I would have had a, a -- an enumerator that
14 had to do with the number of satisfied tacts and a number
15 of satisfied LEPCs, and the denominator would have been
16 the total number of tacts and the total number of LEPCs,
17 and I would have measured that annually by an instrument
18 that was capable of eliciting the responses. That is a
19 database. And you have to measure it. And I'm not likely
20 to be accused of bullshitting the public.
21 UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Can you spell
22 that? (Laughter)
23 MR. MAKRIS: It's interesting, because
24 one of the things we talked about is exactly what Irv just
25 said. We said whatever happens in the combination of
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1 these three processes has to be a situation where the
2 company and Pam, or any environmental group that's dealing
3 with safety factors, can stand tall and say, "This
4 accident doesn't mean that all the work we've been doing
5 together wasn't any good."
6 So there has to be enough foundation to give
7 the folks who are moving higher levels of safety and
8 building public trust through community interaction, a
9 foundation by which they can say, "One accident is not the
10 whole world made bad. "
11 DR. MANNAN: That part of the room is
12 kind of quiet. Let's go to --
13 DR. MANNAN: Name.
14 MR. CLEMENT: Brad Clement, Vulcan
15 Chemicals.
16 I guess my view on this...group three, these
17 are activities -- at least I could group these as
18 activities to reach the vision of zero accidents, zero
19 accidents. Group two, there still needs to be a numerical
20 goal or numerical indicator to show whether we are
21 improving or not. So I see them both working together, I
22 guess.
23 DR. MANNAN: Anyone else?
24 Yes, Kathy.
25 MS. JONES: This is Kathy again. I
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1 just want to follow on the comment that you made.
2 So does that shift to group two, that they
3 have to come up with a target? I mean is that --
4 MR. GABLEHOUSE: No. No.
5 MS. JONES: -- what happens if group
6 one laid out activities, but still there has to be a
7 measurement of something? Is it just greater or lesser
8 than, or does someone have to come up with some goals or
9 some interim targets?
10 DR. MANNAN: Let's go to Brad, back,
11 then come back to Greg.
12 MR. CLEMENT: To me, I guess that's a
13 decision for the whole group of whether we want to set a
14 target. We have a vision of zero.
15 Again, it may be what Jim was saying: We
16 need some steps along the way to know -- to improve, he
17 said, you know, pop the champagne bottle. I think that's
18 open to the whole -- all the committees. Do we want to
19 set incremental steps? And that's probably open for
20 discussion in a larger group.
21 DR. MANNAN: Greg Keeports.
22 MR. KEEPORTS: This is Gregg Keeports.
23 When we were talking -- discussing, I kind
24 of related what our company, Rohm and Haas, had done over
25 the years, and Irv's pretty familiar with this. When we
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1 started keeping track of OII as a metric, and it was truly
2 amazing how much progress over the years by the fact that
3 we just kept track of that. And we had -- I won't say we
4 had a vision of zero at that time.
5 We do now, Irv. Thank you.
6 MR. ROSENTHAL: You can walk on water,
7 I can't.
8 MR. KEEPORTS: I just said target.
9 But the fact that we had something to compare it to,
10 that's why we really need the metrics. But we didn't have
11 a firm target. Actually, we did have ever-decreasing
12 annualized targets. But I don't know how you'd -- we
13 don't even know where we are today, so I'm not sure how
14 you'd set those targets at this point, that would really
15 be meaningful.
16 But I think the key thing is that if we can
17 measure progress, and if you take the elements that Tim
18 laid out on the board there and can apply metrics that are
19 meaningful to most of those elements, I think we can do an
20 awful lot by just the CEOs comparing each other's
21 company's performance is amazing power, once they
22 understand what other people are doing and where they
23 happen to be. And I think as you start that, it's going
24 to bubble -- well, it's percolating down from large
25 companies to smaller companies.
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1 MR. GABLEHOUSE: Right.
2 MR. KEEPORTS: So we weren't real, real
3 concerned about having an interim target. I mean, I'm
4 willing to drink champagne anytime with you when you want
5 to; but we just want to be sure that we can measure our
6 progress and have some meaningful metrics, so that people
7 say, "Hey, yeah, you guys are credible," and everybody we
8 talk to says we're credible.
9 DR. MANNAN: Okay. Jim Overman and
10 then Lee Feldstein.
11 MR. OVERMAN: I guess my personal
12 concern in this is that, that to use -- to use somewhat of
13 an analogy. President Kennedy stood up and said, "In ten
14 years, we're going to put a man on the moon." And
15 everybody got excited about that. If he had stood up and
16 said, "In ten years, we're going to have something called
17 transistors," that nobody really understood, or, "In ten
18 years or in four years, we're going to develop a new
19 rocket fuel," or, "In three years, we're going to develop
20 good communications between competitors in the aerospace
21 industry," all of that led towards that goal, but it did
22 not grab the imagination and cause some sort of passion.
23 In our group, we can -- in this group here,
24 we can be very passionate about some of these things that
25 I would call soft targets and soft goals; but we're not
88
1 going to make the changes necessary to reach our vision.
2 And to do that, we're going to have to have some things
3 that grasp the imagination of a lot of people of varied
4 interests -- Pam's group, Lois's group, the CEO of the Dow
5 Chemical Company, and the guy that owns the Acme Blending
6 Company -- are all going to have to get excited about what
7 we say. So that's the challenge.
8 DR. MANNAN: You know, I have to say
9 that I do agree with Jim Overman that, you know, having
10 substantive, quantitative goals is probably a very key
11 issue; otherwise, we're going to start losing support.
12 MR. GABLEHOUSE: Before the train runs
13 too far. The point is, Jim, where we get -- where we get
14 the excitement and the passion is the communication
15 between the local entity and the local folks in that
16 audience. Okay. The people that are directly impacted by
17 the risk are where you get that passion. And by
18 communication between that entity to that local group that
19 says, "Hey, we have the vision of no accidents at this
20 facility and no impact on you folks in this community,"
21 okay, and that from that, we're building public trust.
22 And the way you achieve that at each local enterprise is
23 by having a whole bunch of approaches against which you
24 can apply some metric at that local facility.
25 I mean, the appropriate metric at the
89
1 fertilizer reformulator in Brush is a whole heck of a lot
2 different than the appropriate metric at Dow Freeport.
3 MR. OVERMAN: And I agree
4 wholeheartedly with that, and maybe I can sum up what I'm
5 hearing from some people.
6 We need a national metric, and that national
7 metric tells me when we're getting to where we as a nation
8 want to go in chemical safety. We need, as part of that
9 program, for each entity to develop tools and metrics that
10 allow them to do their portion.
11 The question then, does this group help
12 develop those tools and metrics for that small entity, or
13 do we work on the global issue of what the national goal
14 is, and maybe we do some of both. Maybe a subset of our
15 goals is the number of people that are developing local
16 goals.
17 MR. GABLEHOUSE: I mean, I think we --
18 MR. FELDSTEIN: All right. I got the
19 microphone. (Laughter)
20 DR. MANNAN: Lee has been holding his
21 peace for a long time. Go ahead, Lee.
22 MR. FELDSTEIN: Lee Feldstein.
23 When group three started up, one of the
24 things that first occurred to me was the difficulty and
25 the somewhat, not meaningless, but vagueness of assigning
90
1 a particular number or percent to accidents, or the lack
2 of accidents. It then could occur that would -- that that
3 would skew all those results and would be fairly
4 deceptive.
5 If you look at the process here, which as
6 has been described, it is a process, I don't see why there
7 couldn't be benchmarks or indicators that would describe
8 the process and that actually could be related to local
9 circumstances and to local characteristics that could be
10 used to compare communities, compare industries.
11 MR. COGAN: I'd like to suggest that
12 Jim Overman is right.
13 Phil Cogan, Chemical Safety Board. I'm
14 sorry. Phil.
15 Jim is right. I think Tim is right. I
16 think group one is right. I don't believe that these
17 statements are necessarily inconsistent. On the one hand
18 what you have is for the grand vision. If President
19 Kennedy had said, "We're going to have a first stage
20 booster capable of lifting X number of hundreds of
21 thousands of pounds at such-and-such a speed and
22 such-and-such a distance," people would not have gotten
23 excited about it. Yet if we were the ones behind the
24 scenes responsible for implementing the grand vision of
25 getting to the moon in 10 years, we would have understood
91
1 it; we would have been energized by it.
2 So what I'm suggesting is that, on the one
3 hand, we need a very broad, general, exciting vision which
4 says, "We're not going to tolerate accidents;" but then on
5 the other side, among those who have to breathe life into
6 that vision, you need the more specifics. One group won't
7 tolerate the generalities/the other one won't tolerate the
8 specifics.
9 The other thing I want to suggest is that --
10 the idea of tolerance. There is a suspicion among
11 environmentalists that industry -- environmentalists and
12 activists that industry tolerates accidents because it's
13 the cost of doing business. And there is a suspicion on
14 the part of industry, I suspect, that environmentalists
15 and community activists don't tolerate the inevitability
16 of accidents in industry as a part of doing business in
17 hazardous areas. And the concept of tolerance can also be
18 promoted by both ends of the spectrum in achieving goals.
19
20 That industry will be more willing to work
21 toward no accidents, or zero accidents, by demonstrating
22 that they don't tolerate the idea of having accidents; and
23 also the communities can help industry by demonstrating
24 that they understand that they must tolerate accidents
25 because it's inevitable, given the nature of the
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1 activities.
2 DR. MANNAN: Irv.
3 MR. ROSENTHAL: I agree with what Phil
4 has said. And I think the, the -- I want to make this
5 observation that was made, that was confusing to some
6 degree, mixing in means and ends. And I think working
7 with the communities is an important means of getting the
8 communication of what, in fact, we have to do. If we
9 don't really reduce the number of accidents, it won't make
10 any difference what we do in particular communities.
11 It's also a fact that there doesn't need to
12 be motivation. We don't live in the best of all worlds
13 where all plant management is focused entirely on safety,
14 just trying to stay alive. We don't live in a world where
15 community activity is such that, when you throw a meeting,
16 people come. I've been through many meetings where people
17 don't show up at all, when you -- when you try to roll out
18 something.
19 There are a number of initiatives. What Tim
20 outlined is an important one, once we come to a goal. You
21 know, when you and I outlined in our papers, Sam, the
22 prevention initiative, which might go through a campaign;
23 we discussed further with the National Safety Council to
24 push the people with big R and C, responsible care, to do
25 a better job in their program; to get Smerko's group to do
93
1 a better job in the training and the other things that
2 they do. These are all tools that have to be done.
3 But, bottom line, if you want to run a
4 national program and you want to have credibility, you
5 have to have a statistic over time that you are marching
6 towards. You have to have a rate of reduction. It cannot
7 necessarily be that you'll be to zero. You will be to
8 zero, you will be at the moon. But the next five years,
9 you're going to do what Greg says; you're going to have a
10 rate of reduction of 5 percent a year, or something like
11 that, and you have to be able to measure it.
12 You need other metrics to help the
13 subgroups. You need a metric that will help the community
14 evaluate where the community councils are indeed, or
15 community activists feel that, on average, they're making
16 progress; that is, over the last year, 70 percent did;
17 this year, 73 percent did. You need a -- you need a
18 series of these metrics on the means that will add up to
19 your national goal, if we're going to adopt one.
20 DR. MANNAN: You know, Irv, you have
21 very eloquently said what Overman, myself, Greg, and a few
22 others have been mumbling about; but I don't expect
23 anything less of you.
24 MR. ROSENTHAL: When you're 74, you can
25 do it, too. (Laughter)
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1 DR. MANNAN: Let me make a motion here
2 and see what the whole group thinks about this. That we
3 ask this third group, third subcommittee, to go back and
4 rework their game plan as follows. Okay, let me finish
5 that and see what you think. As follows:
6 No. 1, it's accepted that we do need a
7 national goal as explained by Irv, in terms of
8 substantive, quantitative reduction of chemical accidents,
9 based on the data provided by group one, the database
10 system that they develop, or call it repository of
11 incidents and near-misses.
12 In addition to that, in order to reach that
13 national goal, the substantive local programs that need to
14 work are the ones that they have already outlined.
15 So what I'm saying is that this kind of fits
16 into how you get the national goals accomplished.
17 If the whole group kind of has a general
18 consensus of it, then we can ask the subcommittee three to
19 go back and work on it.
20 MR. GABLEHOUSE: You might as well do
21 that, I think, probably as a large group function;
22 because you've just stated the likely outcome of anything
23 we would go do; which is to say, the national goal is to
24 demonstrate progress towards accident reduction, based on
25 some appropriate metric.
95
1 We can go back and conclude that and come
2 back and tell you, if you want.
3 But fundamentally, Sam, you're not going to
4 get any more specific statement of that. But whether or
5 not -- but whether or not any particular entity is going
6 to demonstrate that it's making progress towards that goal
7 can't be based solely on accident reduction, because many
8 entities don't have it. Some entities have a
9 disproportionate view, if we can end up on a site-specific
10 basis evaluating what's important. I mean, for some
11 entities, coming up with a new training program or buying
12 a fire truck --
13 MR. MAKRIS: Or even the smallest
14 amount of management attention at all.
15 MR. GABLEHOUSE: At all, is going to be
16 a local goal that they need to do -- need to demonstrate
17 that they're making progress to.
18 I mean, we're not going to come up with a
19 better national goal, because it's going to be a
20 completely arbitrary thing. We can come back and say,
21 "Well, you ought to do it 10 percent a year," and we'll
22 have the same debate. So, I mean, if that's the goal you
23 want, then you might as well drive it -- you might as well
24 drive it in this full group. Because, I mean, it's sort
25 of pointless to have us go back and do that.
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1 DR. MANNAN: Irv.
2 MR. ROSENTHAL: I wonder if you're not
3 properly appreciating the value of the work your group
4 did. Because I think it pointed out the need for programs
5 that may not have objective criteria. What you're saying
6 is that among the criteria we need as measurements of
7 functions we're doing to achieve this goal. The goal of
8 10 percent is the result of the means that was pointed
9 out.
10 We need a measurement of how satisfied the
11 communities are, and you identified that. Obviously, it
12 was not something that we thought of in the metrics
13 group. So it was a very productive exercise.
14 If the National Safety Council ever gets
15 started on that, we need a measure of their work. I think
16 we ought to ask CMA to give us a numerical index of
17 progress on responsible care elements, to put together one
18 -- a composite one. Likewise for the Chlorine Institute
19 and the other groups. We ought to enlist as many of these
20 groups and try to get them to adopt metrics of their
21 choosing that will allow us to measure -- allow them to
22 communicate the progress they desire themselves.
23 MR. GABLEHOUSE: This was a valid
24 point. That was precisely what I was going to say.
25 I mean, my only observation, Irv, and I
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1 suspect it's not your intent, is we don't want to set up
2 competitive kinds of approaches: My bad stuff is better
3 than your bad stuff sort of thing. And I know that's not
4 what you mean.
5 But I think it makes an awful lot of sense
6 for groups of organizations allied under various trade
7 associations to think about the kind of metric that's
8 appropriate to their membership, for purposes of
9 communicating on a site-specific basis thing. It makes a
10 lot of sense.
11 DR. MANNAN: Kathy.
12 MS. JONES: Actually, I agree with
13 that. And the only comment that I have to make is, I
14 thought, to a certain extent, that all the stakeholder
15 groups that are represented here, whether they are
16 perfect, or I suspect many of them are still imperfect, we
17 all have measurement systems in place.
18 I mean, in the Federal Government, it's
19 called GPRA. We set reduction goals. We struggle with
20 how we measure our progress toward meeting these goals.
21 And I thought, to some extent, the purpose of this
22 exercise was to kind of pull those together; not preclude
23 all those individual things that are going on, which show
24 whether or not, you know, in our individual organizations
25 at local, state and national levels we're doing things.
98
1 But I thought that this was almost in addition. But in a
2 more general way, we would be able to say, once and for
3 all, whether or not things were improving in chemical
4 safety.
5 So I'm still, like, thinking that in
6 addition to that, we have to have some measurement that
7 shows where we've been and whether we're making any
8 progress.
9 DR. MANNAN: Let me go to Paul Beswick
10 here, Jim Overman, then back to Tim.
11 MR. BESWICK: The other concern we had
12 about trying to set a national -- a quantitative national
13 goal, Irv, is who is it going to satisfy? Is it going to
14 satisfy all the companies who are contributing to it, the
15 public at large, Congress, all of the agencies?
16 Our thinking was, let's establish specific
17 goals to improve the processes that would contribute to
18 accident reduction, and then you'd have a host of metrics.
19 Each metric may be tuned to different stakeholders, that
20 would show progress toward achieving those goals. And
21 progress is going to be in the eye of the beholder. So
22 you're going to have a wide range of different metrics in
23 that regard.
24 But the overall thing you're trying to do is
25 establish a culture that: We do not tolerate chemical
99
1 accidents. That culture permeates industry, agencies and
2 the public.
3 MR. ROSENTHAL: As a matter of fact, it
4 doesn't permeate us all, unfortunately.
5 MR. BESWICK: That's the goal.
6 MR. ROSENTHAL: Okay, the goal.
7 But the purpose of a goal is the same reason
8 you have poverty goals, or illness goals, or vaccination
9 goals. You can't communicate the complexity involved in
10 all of these subprograms. You want something around
11 which, hopefully, all elements of our community, that is,
12 the manufacturers, the responders, the public interest
13 groups, the regulators can coalesce and each do their
14 part.
15 You need -- it's a communication tool. It
16 doesn't create value in and of itself. I mean, I can say
17 it, and I can say zero is our goal, and that does not
18 communicate value unless it dramatizes or motivates people.
19 DR. MANNAN: All right.
20 MR. GABLEHOUSE: I will talk fast,
21 Jim. Of course, I will talk on the way.
22 MR. CHALUPKA: I'll meet you halfway.
23 MR. GABLEHOUSE: I mean, everybody has
24 got -- everybody's got an institutional imperative around
25 which they are going to have to demonstrate, through some
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1 metric, that they're doing whatever it is they expect to
2 do.
3 MR. MAKRIS: Is he still walking?
4 MR. GABLEHOUSE: Yeah. (Laughter)
5 Which means -- which means you've got one,
6 Kathy, that you're going to have to use; an institutional
7 imperative that's going to require you to try to measure
8 something. Okay?
9 Now, I think, hopefully, we have suggested
10 by breaking down the people, process, products, some other
11 kinds of metrics, you might consider to satisfy your
12 institutional imperative. But the institutional
13 imperative of the local group -- you know, Pam and I
14 maybe -- is different than your institutional imperative.
15 DR. MANNAN: Jim, after you're done, if
16 you'd give it to Mark Tweeddale.
17 MR. OVERMAN: What was that? I'm
18 sorry.
19 DR. MANNAN: After you're done, give
20 it to Mark Tweeddale over here.
21 MR. OVERMAN: Okay.
22 You know -- again, I think we have the grand
23 national goal that gets everybody interested and excited.
24 It sounds to me like we do have a need for a goal that
25 says something, off the wall, like, how many companies
101
1 have made public commitments to targeted reductions in
2 chemical accidents?
3 If we view the total number of chemistry of
4 companies involved, Irv, we could even get the right
5 denominator and give you a ratio.
6 Hopefully, through the communication
7 efforts, that number would increase substantially over the
8 next several years. There may be a necessary number of
9 how many communities have had public meetings where local
10 industry has had an opportunity to talk about their
11 targeted reduction goals. That may be another step. And
12 I think those, those have meetings within the context of
13 the overall goal, which is to eliminate incidents.
14 And if group three believes that those are
15 important goals, group two will look at the metrics, and
16 group one will then look at how we gather that data. And
17 I think that's appropriate.
18 So I really think we're spending a lot of
19 time dancing around issues that we're already in agreement
20 with.
21 We have this overreaching goal. But a
22 second part of that, in our vision, is community
23 involvement.
24 And I think Tim has given us a challenge to
25 go back and find some ways that measure community and
102
1 local involvement. And I would assert one of those is
2 number of enterprises that have publicly committed to
3 targeted reduction goals. If it's a company that has not
4 had a chemical release in 15 years, it's meaningless to
5 have a goal that says, "We won't have any chemical
6 releases next year." They need to come up with something
7 else. Okay?
8 UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Hey, Jim, I
9 don't agree with it.
10 MR. OVERMAN: I gave you that
11 opportunity, so you would be able to continue.
12 DR. TWEEDDALE: Mark Tweeddale. I have
13 the microphone now. (Laughter)
14 If it's like a university lecturer, I don't
15 stop under an hour.
16 It seems to me -- there was discussion
17 before we broke into groups this morning about how we
18 coordinate these three subgroups. And it seems to me this
19 discussion has been heading very much in that direction.
20 Certainly my impression is that those of us
21 in group two have been trying to say it's up to group
22 three to take the next step. I don't agree.
23 What we've heard in this discussion's
24 actually added to group two's work. In group two, we came
25 up with, off the top of my head, something like 30
103
1 enumerators and perhaps 15 denominators. That gives us
2 something like 450 possible ratios that are measures.
3 Okay? In theory. Some of them may be feathers per pig,
4 or something quite useless like that, you see.
5 Now, we've had other suggestions that have
6 arisen out of this discussion like the number of or ratio
7 -- proportion of companies that have made a public
8 commitment to whatever. And there were other comments
9 like that.
10 Now, it seems to me that the program that
11 group two came up with is one that group two needs to take
12 a step further before it can be much help to anybody
13 else. If we set up this matrix, and say the enumerator's
14 across the top, the denominator's down the side, we have
15 these 450 cells. And then it may be that group two, or it
16 may be a small subgroup representing the various interest
17 groups, stakeholders, work through those cells one by one
18 and say, "Feathers per pig doesn't make sense. Go on to
19 the next one." Deaths per year, that might be a useful
20 one. And sort out the cells that appear to make sense,
21 representing all the various stakeholders. It may be not,
22 as I said, the job for a large group, but a small, select
23 group representing the various interest groups.
24 Then looking at the graph which Jim put up
25 on the board there, sorting out the ease and criticality,
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1 if group one were then all the people represented -- some
2 people representing group one were to say, "Well, this is
3 going to be very hard data to get," and people
4 representing group three may say, "Well, this is actually
5 going to be very important," for each of those cells we
6 can put, if you like, a value ratio, or an importance
7 ratio. And that will give us a priority for these units.
8 And some of them, we may say, "This is critical at the
9 national level to determine where national priorities
10 should be placed," and others we know may say, "It's going
11 to be very useful at the local level more." And it seems
12 to me that something along those lines is a reasonable
13 step -- reasonable approach to take ahead.
14 DR. MANNAN: Dave.
15 MR. WILLETTE: There is actually a
16 measurement system that is well in place. And the way
17 that I know that is, we're here in this room and we have
18 this regulation. People have been measuring us. And I
19 think in terms of measurement, we ought to be looking to
20 what are people concerned about and how -- and how can we
21 measure their degree of concerns. And I think if we do
22 that, we're going to be -- these are all necessary, by the
23 way. But if we could measure those kinds of concerns, I
24 think we will be in much better shape.
25 DR. MANNAN: Bob Smerko.
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1 MR. SMERKO: I just want to voice my
2 disagreement with what Jim from Dow said.
3 Jim, I think if you go 15 years without an
4 accident, you owe it to your community to promise them
5 that you're not going to have an accident the next year,
6 either.
7 MR. OVERMAN: Pardon me. Pardon me. I
8 meant it was meaningless to talk about accident rates if
9 the rate has been zero. All you can do is say, "I can't
10 show an improvement over that. All I can show is not
11 getting worse." That's what I meant, Bob. Pardon me.
12 MR. SMERKO: You're forgiven. You're
13 forgiven.
14 MR. OVERMAN: I recognized my mistake
15 as soon as you brought it to my attention. (Laughter)
16 DR. MANNAN: If you notice, I took the
17 mic back.
18 Okay. Let's do something here that -- if
19 you don't want to do it, let me know, but here's what I'd
20 like to do, okay. First, let me ask you this. Is there a
21 need for overarching, substantive, quantitative reduction
22 in goals?
23 MR. ROSENTHAL: You want an expression
24 of yes, no, or pause?
25 DR. MANNAN: Yes or no. Raise your
106
1 hands.
2 MR. MAKRIS: What's the question?
3 DR. MANNAN: Is there a need for
4 quantitative reduction in accidents?
5 MR. GABLEHOUSE: On a national basis?
6 DR. MANNAN: On a national basis.
7 Is that a majority? Everyone agrees?
8 Okay.
9 If that is the case, should that be a
10 function of this whole group or should we still kick it
11 back to subcommittee three?
12 MR. GABLEHOUSE: Can I answer your
13 question for you?
14 DR. MANNAN: It's going to be yes or
15 no. Should it be a function of this whole group? Yes?
16 Okay. So that's the majority opinion, that this whole
17 group should determine those quantitative goals.
18 What I suggest is, after we get into the
19 other room a little while later, we work on that. But
20 before we work on that, here's also another thing, I'd
21 like the suggestion, is, No. 1, go back to group one.
22 Did Kari Barrett run away? Oh, there she
23 is. You moved away.
24 MS. BARRETT: Here I am. Getting a
25 different perspective.
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1 DR. MANNAN: Okay. (Laughter)
2 We go back to group one and group two and
3 give them a little bit of discussion time as to how their
4 work now readjusts or works with what Tim Gablehouse's
5 group discussed. For example, how would that -- this
6 repository on incidences and near-misses, how would that
7 work with what they're trying to do?
8 And, number two again, the measurement
9 system, group two, how would what they're suggesting work
10 with what they're trying to do? Is that agreeable? And
11 if we can do that for another 10, 15 minutes.
12 MR. OVERMAN: I have a suggestion: The
13 groups will reconvene in about 13 minutes, at 2 o'clock.
14 Because some of us may need to move around and digest
15 food.
16 DR. MANNAN: What I was going to
17 suggest is that after we finish that discussion, we take a
18 break and then go to the breakout sessions again.
19 MR. ROSENTHAL: Jim says he's got to go
20 to the bathroom now.
21 DR. MANNAN: Well, if you do, go right
22 ahead. (Laughter)
23 MR. OVERMAN: No, I was being nice to
24 everybody.
25 UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: This is group
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1 three. The two groups look at that.
2 DR. MANNAN: Yeah, we can do that. So,
3 Kari, you want to lead that discussion?
4 MR. OVERMAN: Some of us just need to
5 go more often. (Laughter)
6 DR. MANNAN: Did you hear what I said?
7 MR. GABLEHOUSE: We have photograph
8 representations here.
9 MS. BARRETT: No. I'm sorry.
10 DR. MANNAN: Based on what group three
11 is trying to do, is your repository of incidences and
12 near-misses, is that going to be sufficient or adequate to
13 accomplish what they're trying to do?
14 MR. BARRETT: I guess I would welcome
15 input from some of the other subcommittee members. Number
16 one, do you feel like we can make some progress by meeting
17 again without some of these other -- without more
18 direction? Can we contribute something by breaking out
19 and bringing it back to this group without further
20 discussion on two and three? And I open that up to the
21 group.
22 DR. MANNAN: Did everyone hear that?
23 Okay.
24 UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Yes. I don't
25 think -- I don't think we can, Kari. There's one person
109
1 in group one. I don't think we can really do anything. I
2 would be --
3 MS. BARRETT: I'm feeling a bit that
4 way. I don't know. Kathy, Irene, Mike, others.
5 MS. JONES: I just want to say I agree.
6 I don't think we can go any further. But I did pick up
7 one thing that I heard, that we didn't discuss in any
8 great detail in our group, and I guess it's a question for
9 the other groups and, that is, are you looking to group
10 one to also identify and collect the data on public
11 trust? Do you know what I mean? So far we have based
12 this on an accident database.
13 (Everyone begins to speak simultaneously)
14 DR. MANNAN: Hang on. Hang on a
15 second. Judy's having trouble recording this. So let's
16 not have --
17 MS. JONES: We did, Kari -- we did to
18 the extent we said we would try and identify and collect
19 data on the effect of community interaction. But I think
20 there was a whole separate issue that was raised here, and
21 it's that some data needs to be collected on: Are we
22 building public trust? So that's one additional thing I
23 heard that we could add. But, in general, I think we need
24 more feedback from the other groups and info.
25 DR. MANNAN: Okay. Greg.
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1 MR. KEEPORTS: One of the things that
2 strikes me is that, group three, we did our thing, and
3 everybody else did theirs, and we are sharing this
4 information here; but we haven't had a chance to really
5 understand, in any kind of depth, what the other two
6 groups have done.
7 And I think we have probably some ideas
8 rolling around in our head of the kinds of metrics, other
9 than the normal things that anybody would think about,
10 should be collected. Now, I'm not sure the best way to
11 approach that. But, right now, if we go back in our
12 group, we can do a lot of what we've heard here, but we're
13 not exactly sure, you know, what this 400-cell matrix
14 looks like that group two is working on, and the kinds of
15 other issues that group one had done. So I'm not really
16 sure which -- what the best way to proceed on this is.
17 DR. MANNAN: That's Greg Keeports.
18 Jim Makris.
19 MR. MAKRIS: Yeah, I'd like to say I'm
20 sure of what the right way to go is, but I'm not. A sense
21 I have, however, is that the process is working exactly as
22 you hoped it would; which is, folks went and focused on
23 one part of the issue in depth and reached a whole lot of
24 conclusions. And I think that's good. I think that we
25 would not have done -- we would not be where we are had we
111
1 stayed together in a single group for two hours this
2 morning. I think as a result of breaking out and people
3 focusing on their own issues, they brought back some
4 provocative ideas, and they are being very well exchanged
5 right now.
6 It seems to me you have two choices, Sam,
7 and one would be to accommodate Overman and his needs; we
8 break now, and --
9 DR. MANNAN: I would say, Overman, our
10 needs.
11 UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: No, I don't want
12 to get involved in his deal.
13 MR. MAKRIS: And I would leave it to
14 minds wiser than mine as to whether or not we should
15 immediately go to a large group, let groups one and two
16 each have 10 or 15 minutes, and then have a general
17 discussion, or whether there was enough conveyance of
18 points of view from each of the groups to each other that
19 the group could get together for about 30 minutes -- the
20 individual groups to get together for about 30 minutes,
21 until about 2:30.
22 Now having a better understanding of how
23 what we did deals with what other people did, then come
24 back and spend an hour just talking about how they
25 interrelate. I'm not sure which is the better. My
112
1 inclination is the second.
2 DR. MANNAN: Yes, that is, the groups
3 go back and talk.
4 UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: For 30 minutes.
5 DR. MANNAN: Yes, I agree. Then come
6 back together.
7 Jim Overman.
8 MR. OVERMAN: After a two-minute
9 break.
10 I recognize it. It was Irv. It wasn't me.
11 UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Like you
12 should.
13 MR. OVERMAN: It seems to me we have
14 two parts of our overreaching vision: We have the
15 incident reduction and the public involvement. The issues
16 now come down into what is the criteria for an incident.
17 Because we can measure things. We don't know what the
18 criteria is. Everybody will be calling an incident when
19 it's not; or not, when it is. And then what the
20 measurement is going to be. We've gone a long way in that
21 direction, and I think that group one is doing -- has done
22 a lot of looking at what is the criteria to make it an
23 incident. Group two has done that. We may need to get
24 together to discuss those criteria.
25 Where we're -- where we're really at wits
113
1 end is this idea of public involvement. Group three has
2 emphasized that for us. And thank you. We need to look
3 at what the criteria are for public involvement, and then
4 we need to look at how we measure those criteria in some
5 meaningful way.
6 I would suggest that what we would do is go
7 into the 30-minute groups and really stress that second
8 half, the public involvement, then get back together as a
9 group, and maybe split up again and have a criteria group
10 and a measurement group, and sort of get a little bit of
11 cross-pollination between these three groups, so we get
12 those point of views. So that's just a thought.
13 DR. MANNAN: Okay. Let's go into a
14 break. But before we do that, let me also mention
15 something else.
16 MR. MAKRIS: Is he excused yet?
17 (Laughter)
18 DR. MANNAN: Let me also mention
19 something else. I think as we go away from here today --
20 because, you know, we're almost at 2 o'clock, and 4
21 o'clock is the deadline that was chosen.
22 As we go away from today, naturally we do
23 want some kind of a game plan -- it doesn't have to be an
24 action plan -- some kind of game plan of what we're going
25 to do.
114
1 Now, I'd like to see in the game plan the
2 following: When do we meet again? Should it be in
3 another one year or should it be earlier? The consensus
4 that I heard in the Project Advisory Committee last night
5 was that it has to be very quickly, maybe even the first
6 month of next year. Okay. And if that is the case, we'll
7 be happy to host you again over here, under the same
8 circumstances. But let's not come back to the next
9 meeting with exactly where we are. Okay?
10 What I'd like for the committees to do is to
11 do some intensive e-mail, fax, phone work, okay. And any
12 help that we, the project group, can give you, or if you
13 would like us to perform certain tasks, okay -- pull
14 together documents, pull together research items -- tell
15 us. We will put people at your disposal. And we'll try
16 to pull together conference calls, set up 800 numbers, and
17 things like that.
18 So when we come back from the breakout
19 groups, one of the things I want to identify is the date
20 we meet again next time; and, No. 2, for each group to say
21 what they're going to do between the intervening period,
22 from now to January, if January is what you select.
23 And then the third thing, let me remind you
24 again, is that we have to go back and look at the
25 groupings and see if the members we have are the right,
115
1 adequate members, including diversity of stakeholder
2 background, capability, expertise and passion. If we
3 don't have those people, we need to invite them. Okay?
4 So let's go to a break before Jim Overman --
5 2:00 to 2:15. Fifteen-minute break.
6
7 (Brief recess)
8
9 DR. MANNAN: Okay. If I can have your
10 attention for just a few minutes. If I can have your
11 attention for just a few minutes. If you will take your
12 seat, then we will get finished for today.
13 You know, I asked -- someone asked me how do
14 you get such a group of very busy and very well-traveled
15 people to perform in this kind of situation. And I said,
16 well, you give them a lot of money, be nice to them, and
17 feed them well. Well, at least we're doing two out of
18 three. Which two, you should know that.
19 But apart from that, I also wanted you to
20 take a small memento. To those of you who have not picked
21 up one of these mugs, please do so.
22 Did I give you one, Johnny?
23 But while I'm doing this, why don't you go
24 ahead -- we want to start with the third group this time.
25 Go back. So, Tim, go ahead and go, but you have got 10
116
1 minutes okay? Tim, you have got 10 minutes, okay? No
2 more than 10.
3 MR. GABLEHOUSE: Piece of cake. Okay.
4 Turn around the magic board. Okay. What we did --
5 hello.
6 DR. MANNAN: Go ahead, Tim.
7 MR. GABLEHOUSE: Sam get his coffee
8 mugs? Okay.
9 What we did is, we continued in our theme,
10 if you will: people, process and products. And we came
11 up with what we viewed as the national goal under each
12 each one of those criteria.
13 In the case of people, we have the national
14 goal that every zip code should be covered by a functional
15 LEPC-like organization.
16 And I want to point out one things about all
17 these goals, which is, there's very broad ownership of
18 that kind of goal. It's not just one entity or type of
19 entity's responsibility. There's government ownership
20 here, there is local ownership here, there is advocacy
21 groups ownership here, and there is ownership by regulated
22 or affected facilities.
23 As an example within that goal, entities
24 ought to establish, if they don't already exist, or
25 participate in establishing some sort of community-based
117
1 goal -- or group, rather, to establish communications.
2 And those communications are first in the vision for
3 safety risk reduction, prevention of accidents, and so
4 forth, and that they ought to react to the local needs and
5 issues raised by that group. Help to establish roles and
6 activities within the local community in relationship to
7 that entity. And one of the metrics you may establish,
8 besides whether or not you've got this, you look for
9 satisfaction and their functionality. GW survey serves as
10 a starting point, but there are other things you can do.
11 In terms of process, you look at the
12 national goal being that every entity ought to have a
13 formal disclosed commitment to zero tolerance for
14 accidents. And that the way you do that is you have to
15 adopt a vision for process safety; appropriate metrics
16 within the context of that organization, to see whether
17 you're performing; recognizing that the national vision is
18 zero; and you evaluate performance, and then you adjust
19 your strategies to improve the performance.
20 In terms of products, we looked at the
21 national goal to be every entity ought to adopt a
22 cradle-to-grave product stewardship program. Now, that
23 will obviously vary, depending on the type of entity. And
24 if you are a Wal-Mart, that's different than if you're
25 Dow. But nonetheless, cradle-to-grave product
118
1 stewardship. That means you got to evaluate the risk of
2 product use distribution of supply, consistent with your
3 vision; establish programs to reduce these risks; and then
4 you can establish metrics to evaluate that program,
5 consistent with what type of entity you represent.
6 And as we suggested before, from all this
7 other jazz that's underneath it, that is, that you have
8 frequent, repetitive, consistent feedback, okay, from
9 local groups to the enterprise, to evaluate your
10 performance as you go through them.
11 So we really did not change where we were at
12 lunch; but what we've tried to do is, within each one of
13 those three elements, give you a perspective on what we
14 would set as a national goal within that.
15 DR. MANNAN: Thank you. (Applause)
16 Group two, Jim Overman.
17 MR. OVERMAN: It must have something to
18 do with the fact that we ate, because we always seem to
19 come together better on a full stomach.
20 DR. MANNAN: I also love the goals.
21 MR. OVERMAN: Well, I didn't get these
22 posted. We looked at the two-part of the vision -- I get
23 my -- Just hold one side of that up.
24 UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: This one?
25 MR. OVERMAN: Okay. We looked at two
119
1 sides of the vision. our first proposal is that we're
2 going -- we want to measure chemical incidents, chemical
3 process incidents, and we defined -- we didn't define
4 chemical, although we do later. We define process as use,
5 manufacture, and storage, transport, disposal, but not
6 domestic. We are not talking about domestic chemical uses
7 when we do this. And domestic includes the misuse of
8 ethanol by individuals. Okay?
9 We measure the number of chemical process
10 incidents per year. That's the denominator. When we look
11 -- and these process incidents include releases of
12 chemicals which result in -- what are you laughing at?
13 UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Your fly is
14 unzipped.
15 MR. OVERMAN: You got me embarrassed.
16 I think I'll turn around and face the other way.
17 Fire and explosions greater than $25,000
18 damage. We have a question mark on this because one of
19 our public members felt like that was too high. Okay?
20 We'll discuss that. Reportable -- these are federally
21 reportable spills released. To lend some consistency, we
22 had to use the federal reportable requirements criteria.
23 Releases of flammables greater than 5,000 pounds makes the
24 incident definition. And if this -- or if these releases,
25 regardless of size, result in OSHA-recordable to an
120
1 employee or contractor. Off-site evacuation or shelter in
2 place. Off-site injuries. We will have to tweak that a
3 little bit. We spent a lot of time talking about what an
4 injury was. Off-site acute environmental damage. Acute
5 here means something that's related to the incident, not
6 chronic and something that would result in a TASCA
7 (phonetic) HC report related to the incident. That's our
8 measurements for part one of the vision.
9 Part two of the vision. Well, we started
10 thinking a lot alike, Tim. We talked about a national
11 survey to measure attitudes and perceptions. Number of
12 facilities with a public commitment to reduction, and
13 number of active LEPCs made the list.
14 So I think we're very, very close with this
15 measurement.
16 Questions?
17 DR. MANNAN: We're not taking
18 questions.
19 MR. OVERMAN: Oh, good. Do not ask me
20 any questions.
21 DR. MANNAN: Kari Barrett.
22 MS. BARRETT: My subcommittee will
23 have to help me on what to report.
24 I think we went back and we discussed
25 certainly this public involvement piece and considered it
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1 within our database scope, but we were looking for a bit
2 more direction from the measures group and from the
3 reductions group to figure out sort of the scope of that.
4 So I can't say that we made much more progress on it than
5 really to have some general discussion and to recognize
6 that within our database or some separate -- I mean, we
7 may not have -- we may have more than one data collection
8 activity, but knowing that this is a piece of it.
9 Does anyone else from the subcommittee have
10 anything else to add to that?
11 DR. MANNAN: Kathy.
12 MS. JONES: Jim and Tim seem to think
13 we do.
14 MR. GABLEHOUSE: We're just giving you
15 grief. That's okay. We know your goal. (Laughter)
16 MR. ROSENTHAL: Then why don't you tell
17 us what Kathy is thinking.
18 MR. OVERMAN: Because she hasn't told
19 Kathy what she was thinking.
20 DR. MANNAN: Okay. Let me make some
21 comments here, before I open it up for questions and
22 answers.
23 First of all, the national data system gave
24 me their sign-up sheet. I need the other two, so I can
25 have copies made for everyone before you leave.
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1 UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: I already gave
2 it to you.
3 DR. MANNAN: Beg your pardon?
4 UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: I already gave
5 it to you.
6 DR. MANNAN: Oh, okay. So you already
7 gave it to Donna. Okay. Take it to Donna and have Donna
8 make copies of these two and the other one for everyone
9 here. 30, 33. Okay.
10 Okay. The next thing I want to do is tell
11 you a little bit about the housekeeping before you start
12 leaving; tell you a little bit about scheduling. Okay?
13 First, let's pick a meeting date. Those of you who have
14 calendars in front of you, let's look at the dates and
15 pick a meeting date. Any preferences? I would prefer the
16 earlier part of January. That's my personal preference.
17 (Further Discussion of Meeting Dates)
18 DR. MANNAN: Okay. Okay. Next thing
19 I want to do before, again, I open it up for questions and
20 answers, Judy here tells me that the transcripts are going
21 to be available in about two weeks, maybe a little bit
22 less than two weeks. Let's say we get the transcripts to
23 everyone of you by two weeks, or thereabouts, okay?
24 What I'd like to happen then, I'd like for
25 the committee chairs to take their scratch sheets here or
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1 flip-chart sheets here, and take it with them (Laughter).
2 Because I -- I have not gone through the process -- well,
3 well, what I say, Tim, in y'alls case, is that you can
4 take some of the notes from the white board. But in
5 either case, take these notes with you. And as soon as
6 you get the copy of the transcript, what I'd like for you
7 to do is write up on what you-all decided over here or
8 where you're at. You give that back to me. I will
9 collate all three of those. And with any instructions as
10 to what else our project needs to be doing, if we need to
11 gather any data or information, and I will get all of
12 that back to the whole to you again. Yes, sir.
13 MR. GABLEHOUSE: Sam, can I suggest
14 that you post the transcripts on your Internet site.
15 DR. MANNAN: We can do that,
16 absolutely.
17 MR. GABLEHOUSE: Because, I mean, there
18 are an awful lot of people that are nominally part of this
19 process that are not here.
20 DR. MANNAN: Okay. We will do that
21 absolutely.
22 MR. GABLEHOUSE: And so I agree with
23 that iteration. But what I would like to be able to do is
24 then notify other people per the Internet site, at the
25 posted transcript.
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1 DR. MANNAN: Absolutely. Lois.
2 MS. EPSTEIN: And a suggestion about
3 when you start the first day. If you don't start first
4 thing in the morning, we don't have to be there the day
5 before.
6 DR. MANNAN: What we will do, the first
7 day, we will start at noon, so that everyone has a chance
8 to fly in that day or travel that day. We will start at
9 noon, we will work through till 6:00, we will have dinner
10 provided here at the Center and then go on to the hotel.
11 There will be a cocktail hour and dinner and then go on to
12 the hotel. And then the next day, start at 8:00 and
13 finish up around 3:00 or 4:00. Is that okay?
14 MR. GABLEHOUSE: Overman knows who to
15 cater.
16 DR. MANNAN: Overman knows what?
17 MR. GABLEHOUSE: Who to cater on the
18 first day.
19 MR. OVERMAN: Oh, we can get you a
20 caterer. You want the medium or the extra large?
21 DR. MANNAN: Okay. So then --
22 If we post it in electronic form on the
23 -- this facility is not available on the 9th and 10th.
24 I'm glad Mark is paying attention to our deliberations.
25 MR. GABLEHOUSE: Details, details.
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1 (Further group discussion of meeting dates)
2 DR. MANNAN: This is January 18th and
3 19th, year 2000.
4 MR. CHALUPKA: Tuesday and Wednesday.
5 DR. MANNAN: Okay, Tuesday and
6 Wednesday, January 18th and 19th, year 2000.
7 MR. OVERMAN: Don't worry about it,
8 we'll all be gone anyway.
9 DR. MANNAN: Okay. Let me go back
10 over. So if we put the transcript in electronic form on
11 our website and I e-mail everyone of you that it's there,
12 do y'all need any hard copies? We'll save some rain
13 forests. Okay.
14 The data posted of the things on the website
15 then, then from that day on, how long do you think you
16 need, the subcommittee chairs, to do the write-up and send
17 back to me? Another two weeks; would that be
18 appropriate?
19 MR. GABLEHOUSE: That's cool.
20 DR. MANNAN: Okay. So within two weeks
21 after I get it back, I will collate it. And it will take
22 me about a week to get it collated and act on any other
23 instructions that you might have. And so within five
24 weeks from today, all of you should either get an e-mail
25 saying something is on the website for you to look at or
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1 you will get a hard copy mailed to you.
2 MR. ROSENTHAL: But if you send us an
3 e-mail and it's on the website, go ahead and attach the
4 file in regard to the e-mail.
5 DR. MANNAN: That's a great idea. We
6 can do that, too.
7 MR. GABLEHOUSE: Just link it.
8 MR. MAKRIS: So what you are basically
9 saying, that by the first few days of December, we will
10 have gone through the -- what your work is, you get the
11 transmittal out -- transcript out, comments back, and
12 refine them?
13 DR. MANNAN: Exactly.
14 MR. MAKRIS: The first Monday in
15 December is December 6th.
16 DR. MANNAN: By December 6th, you will
17 have them then, that's right. And then what I'm going to
18 suggest is that it's up to the subcommittee chair to then
19 decide what the next steps should be and work with their
20 subcommittees in taking those next steps.
21 As far as the project group is concerned, we
22 are going to wait for instructions from you as to what you
23 want us to do. Is that agreeable? Okay. Because I don't
24 want the project to work in a vacuum without the input
25 from this learned body.
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1 Also, the Project Advisory Committee, which
2 you have heard a little about, what I'm going to do is,
3 after that first five weeks, I will set up a schedule of
4 conference calls through e-mails and so forth. I think if
5 we have a couple of conference calls between then and
6 January when we meet, we can really set a lot of things in
7 motion and get a lot of things organized.
8 Is that all okay as far as procedure is
9 concerned? Any questions?
10 MR. BESWICK: I think the subcommittee
11 should meet, you know, a couple of conference calls,
12 whatever, in some manner or fashion between now and
13 January 18th.
14 DR. MANNAN: I hundred percent agree
15 with you. But what I'm saying is that I think I should
16 leave that decision, both for whether or not they should
17 meet and the timing and a number of frequency, up to the
18 chairs. I'm not going to tell them to do it in this
19 frequency. But I hundred percent agree with you that that
20 should be done.
21 MR. BESWICK: But I think it should
22 also be a uniform level of expectation as to what each
23 subcommittee should accomplish.
24 DR. MANNAN: Each subcommittee should
25 do.
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1 What do the chairs think about that?
2 UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Well, Kari's
3 going to address that issue.
4 DR. MANNAN: Let me take Tim first and
5 then Brad.
6 MR. GABLEHOUSE: I mean, I think the
7 initial expectation ought to be that each of the groups
8 need to react to what we have learned from the other
9 groups and refine our positions based on those reactions.
10 I mean obviously, from our point of view, we need to do
11 more refinement of our sort of a vision of these goals and
12 how you measure them and so forth. We ought to do that.
13 And I would suggest that -- I mean, the way
14 I would plan on doing this is basically via e-mail
15 discussion groups. And I think we need to copy the other
16 chairs on those e-mails so that those other chairs have
17 some idea of what in the world we're talking about as we
18 go forward. So I think if we do that, we can accomplish a
19 great deal on this via e-mail.
20 DR. MANNAN: Brad.
21 MR. CLEMENT: I just had one
22 recommendation. I think as a minimum, each subcommittee
23 should probably have a conference call and just review the
24 minutes, to get a concurrence that what's captured on
25 paper is what we talked about here today, and then be able
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1 to come back in January, and start, start from there.
2 DR. MANNAN: Okay.
3 MS. BARRETT: As a subgroup chair, I
4 would be happy to -- I would be happy to tell you what our
5 plan forward is, and I should have earlier when I gave my
6 report. But we are going to have a conference call very
7 shortly after this meeting to talk about the action items
8 that we laid out and to make some specific assignments.
9 Then we plan to have either another conference call or a
10 face-to-face meeting to make some progress on those items,
11 particularly looking at identifying organizations that
12 currently are doing some database work, as well as
13 reviewing assessment of those databases. We think we can
14 do that between now and the next meeting, and make some
15 recommendation about what's currently captured that's
16 useful to us, what some of the gaps are and where some
17 integration could occur. So that is sort of our
18 expectation of what we can accomplish between now and the
19 next meeting.
20 MR. OVERMAN: Group two. You want to
21 hear what's going to happen with group two?
22 MR. MAKRIS: No. (Laughter)
23 MR. OVERMAN: Since I am the substitute
24 group two chairman, as soon as I get back, I'm going to
25 try to find the ailing late Ray Skinner, give him this
130
1 information, and ask him to contact the group on
2 conference call or by e-mail, and you can go from there
3 with what Ray wants to do.
4 MR. MAKRIS: And to respond to Lois.
5 Why don't -- why isn't Lois -- why don't Lois and I and
6 Mike Marshall decide, and see if there's some arrangement
7 we could make to have a follow-up meeting in -- we'll meet
8 like April or May or whatever in Washington, so we can
9 have the next one up at home. Why don't you and I and
10 maybe Mike Marshall of OSHA and we figure out out whether
11 or not we can work it out.
12 DR. MANNAN: I will also offer one
13 thing. That if the subcommittee chairs would like for us,
14 the Center, to set up the 800 numbers for the conference
15 calls, we will be happy to do so. Just contact me or
16 better contact Donna Starks and she will help you set
17 those up.
18 Okay. I think we can have some more
19 discussion now. But before anyone started leaving, I
20 wanted to attract your attention to, in a way, a small
21 thing, but in a way that means a lot to me personally.
22 And it indicates that we are making progress slowly but
23 gradually.
24 This is an e-mail that I just got yesterday
25 from a former student of mine. About a year ago he was
131
1 here. It was an undergraduate student at A&M. The e-mail
2 says -- he now works for a chemical company. And on the
3 one hand, he recognizes that the plant is not, as he calls
4 it, a hundred percent chemically safe. One thing I admit,
5 though, is that I must not have done a good job in
6 teaching, because you probably can never be a hundred
7 percent in chemical safety. The right term is probably
8 inherently safer. So as we get moving towards the right
9 direction, we keep making it safer.
10 But one thing I am interested about is the
11 way he -- he is looking at process safety these days. And
12 he writes back saying that go with the other students in
13 the program to look at process safety very seriously and
14 extensively.
15 I think, you know, this is a war we are
16 into, a campaign we are into. We are not going to win
17 overnight, but this is how we'll ultimately get there:
18 Making progress very gradually and working at it
19 altogether. So those are my sentiments as far as that is
20 concerned.
21 Also, I wanted to point out to you before
22 anyone started leaving, is that we have copies of the
23 e-mail contact addresses for each of the groups. Now, I
24 didn't want to pass that around because I don't know if
25 all of you wanted all of the groups. Okay. So if you
132
1 just want y'alls group, just as you're leaving, come up
2 here and pick up the one for your particular group.
3 MS. BARRETT: Sam, we could probably
4 just pass it around the table.
5 DR. MANNAN: That's a better idea.
6 MS. BARRETT: Save us from mobbing the
7 table later.
8 DR. MANNAN: So just take the ones for
9 your group. Okay. Now I would like to open up for any
10 general discussion.
11 MR. OVERMAN: Okay. I think all of us
12 should give a very big hand to Sam Mannan and for the
13 effort the Center has made to get us together and let us
14 do this. (Applause).
15 MS. KASTER: Is this time for
16 discussion?
17 DR. MANNAN: Yes.
18 MS. KASTER: Pam Kaster, Citizens for a
19 Cleaner Environment.
20 Just a suggestion on some of the
21 measurements that group two came up with. I would like to
22 see some positive measurements instead of all just
23 negative measurements, and specifically relating to
24 quality of emergency response and its ability to reduce
25 risk; what are the ratings of the fire department; have
133
1 insurance premiums in the area gone down. Anything that
2 you can think of that might be a positive measurement that
3 we in the community can look at, progress and process has
4 been made in order to keep us safer.
5 MR. SMERKO: Bob Smerko. I am a
6 little bit confused with what Jim Overman has come up
7 with. Thanks.
8 What Sam -- excuse me. What Jim has listed
9 there are the guts of what would be a repository of
10 information on chemical incidents. And I thought that was
11 the role of group number one. So where am I off base?
12 MR. CLEMENT: Group number two was to
13 define the measurement. Group number one is to establish
14 the data repository --
15 MR. GABLEHOUSE: Start again for the
16 record.
17 MR. CLEMENT: To analyze that data or
18 to analyze and, I guess, communicate that data.
19 MR. BESWICK: Paul Beswick.
20 Just also keying off of something Pam said
21 that I think is really important. These issues of process
22 safety is good for your bottom line, I think are going to
23 be critical for getting the message out. So whether it be
24 team one or team two, if we can somehow or other start
25 accumulating documentation on the return on investment for
134
1 process safety accident avoidance measures, I think that
2 would be very important.
3 MR. ROSENTHAL: My feeling is this:
4 That what we define are the types of incidents that we
5 would consider for -- to populate our database, and did
6 not -- it would not define anything. It says, these are
7 the incidents, if we do anything. Where we talk about
8 property loss, we're talking about incidents that fall
9 within this class; that is, what we consider an incident.
10 We now also devised the matrix which,
11 depending on how we choose them, may be used for specific
12 indicators. And the last thing we did to amend that was
13 to bring back something responsive to the point that was
14 made by group three, that they needed something that
15 measured community anxiety or satisfaction with the
16 process. That was the only group we brought back.
17 Three needs to bring back a whole matrix
18 which can be used to decide what types of things ought to
19 go in. These accidents per year is one matrix. But we
20 agree -- and it may be the main one. But we agree within
21 the group that there may be other matrices needed --
22 excuse me, other metrics needed for other subgroups.
23 Which might have, for example, number of incidents per
24 year per -- corrected for inflation value of chemicals.
25 So that 10 years from now, if the chemical industry
135
1 doubles or halves, we'll have that tracked as well.
2 The main one for the community and for
3 communication would be the one, incidents per year,
4 because a lot of people here feel the public can't handle
5 anything more complex than that. (Laughter)
6 MS. KASTER: I'm part of the public. I
7 challenge that statement.
8 MR. ROSENTHAL: That's what a number
9 of people said.
10 MS. KASTER: But I disagree.
11 MS. EPSTEIN: Lois Epstein.
12 I heard an interesting idea earlier, and I
13 wondered if there was any follow-up discussion about it in
14 any of the other groups, which was the potential for
15 perhaps responsible care participants to set goals and
16 report on their progress towards meeting those goals. Was
17 there anymore -- anybody can say to that or is that just
18 an interesting thought?
19 MS. BARRETT: Kari Barrett.
20 Actually, right now with CMA, as part of the
21 responsible care program, all family members do have to
22 set a company goal and communicate on that goal. So that
23 is a part of our program.
24 Those goals will be public. And I'm going
25 to say you'll see something within about the next three
136
1 months. But as an association, we are undertaking that.
2 MS. EPSTEIN: On processing or --
3 MS. BARRETT: Well, it's sort of up to
4 the company right now, and -- but that would be my -- I
5 guess my point in that would be, as long as industry is
6 setting its own goals, it's not going to meet everyone's
7 need here. And so that's what I see the value out of
8 bringing this group together, is that we agree together on
9 goals and communicate on those and move forward.
10 So yes, CMA and responsible care, we can
11 undertake activities; but I look to this group to give us
12 some direction, too, of that which is most important to
13 the undertaking. So you'll see something; it may not meet
14 your need. But hopefully, in the future, it will meet all
15 of our needs.
16 MR. RIEZEL: Yigal Riezel, Israel.
17 First of all, I would like to thank very
18 much to Sam Mannan and the Center. I had a wonderful
19 week here. Very interesting. I was encouraged to come
20 here by Trevor Kletz, who I visited just last
21 Friday, and I really got everything: open house,
22 reception, very interesting discussions. And if you think
23 you are speaking with national targets, you really are by
24 your excellent publications to many nations and many
25 unique or kinds like this, Forensic Society of Safety.
137
1 And I hope really you will continue with this very
2 excellent effort. Thank you. (Applause).
3 MR. OVERMAN: I would like to reply to
4 a couple of things. First, if somebody wants to see an
5 example of what we did on reporting, I encourage you to
6 look at www.dow.com and look up our annual, what we call
7 triple bottom line report, which includes the EH&S goals,
8 our response to community needs, as well as our financial
9 goals. So please look that up. And I would appreciate it
10 if you would e-mail me with comments if you think there is
11 a way we can improve that report. There are also versions
12 of that report which will be made available, that deal
13 with local issues at all of our major sites.
14 UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: What was it
15 called?
16 MR. OVERMAN: www.dow.com. It's our
17 annual triple bottom line report. It may be our 2005 EH&S
18 goals. I don't know how it is on that site.
19 Some comments about data. Well, first,
20 there is no assumption that people can't understand more
21 complex data. The issue was, do people really get hold of
22 and get excited about more complex data. So that's why we
23 wanted to look at the overreaching goal that was somewhat
24 exciting. And, quite frankly, it's easy to understand for
25 everybody. Because the more complex the goal is, the more
138
1 difficult it is to measure; the softer it becomes and the
2 easier it becomes to dance around the goal.
3 I see several purposes of the national
4 database. The first purpose that we've talked about is
5 achieving this reduction in process safety incidents. And
6 using that data to measure and, in fact, encourage that
7 reduction. There's -- and this is sort of a, in a very
8 positive sense, a public relations purpose for that
9 database.
10 A second use for that database is for
11 companies and other entities to look at that data and try
12 to figure out ways to improve themselves. And this is
13 where the real improvement is going to come. That's where
14 you need things like lessons learned, cost data, and
15 things like that, that will allow entities to look up
16 incidents that relate to what they do in their business,
17 and work on it.
18 The third use of this database, quite
19 frankly, is research. Some of it may be practical/some of
20 which may be impractical. There's enough data going into
21 that database for all the students of Dr. Mannan's to
22 probably build 40 or 50 dissertations and thesis the first
23 year. So there's a lot of opportunity there.
24 All of those are important uses. So let's
25 don't -- you know, let's don't limit ourselves in this
139
1 way, when we look at what's going into the repository of
2 information. Just remember that the first purpose for
3 putting it there is to let the public know what we're
4 doing to reduce incidents, and, in fact, encourage a
5 reduction. We will work on positive measurements and take
6 a look at that.
7 Thank you for that comment.
8 MR. ROSENTHAL: I was going to sneak
9 away, but Jim snared me again with his remarks.
10 I want to caution us, however, that these
11 are -- as we add these different elements, unless they
12 meet our immediate purpose, they introduce complexity and
13 delay and ought to be perhaps serial additions. If we
14 start trying to collect root cause and other cause data
15 with every incident we catch, we are going to add
16 resources and complexity.
17 For the purposes that we have in our goals,
18 if those are our goals, unless they are changed in time,
19 if it's 10 percent reduction, any other data elements we
20 get in ought to be in support of a particular program with
21 a clearly enunciated goal, before we just start building
22 it too complex. We are going to -- we're just going to
23 do -- more and more is going to take us longer and longer,
24 'til eventually we will do nothing. So I think if we want
25 to go with these goals, let's stay focused and limit them
140
1 to that.
2 MS. BARRETT: I'm sorry, Irv, I'm
3 actually going to jump back to Jim's remark, and I would
4 do a disservice to CMA and many of our members as far as
5 information that is available to the public.
6 CMA has created with its members a site as
7 www.chemicalguide.com where you can get site-specific
8 information, and I did want to mention that as another
9 source of information.
10 MR. BESWICK: I guess I maybe differ
11 with Irv to a small degree. I think that the database
12 should be producing actionable information that can be
13 used to reduce accident incidents. And that, of course,
14 has to be balanced by the level of complexity which may
15 delay its inception. But I think almost ahead of
16 measuring things, it should be data that can be used or
17 accomplish things.
18 DR. MANNAN: Jim Makris.
19 MR. MAKRIS: I just think we need to
20 keep in mind some of the background to our first goals and
21 some of the discussions that we've had today and those who
22 were fortunate to be here earlier in the week during the
23 seminar here at Texas A&M.
24 By our actions, we are all kind of
25 subscribing to walking on a common path in the public
141
1 interest, for the next couple of years. I think that it's
2 important that all of us keep in mind that the integrity
3 of each of us is on the line here. We are saying, we are
4 going to move forward and trust with confidence, with
5 certainty, and honesty and integrity. That means that,
6 you know, without necessarily having -- you know, casting
7 it in blood, we are fundamentally agreeing that we're on
8 the right track; that we're going to be helping CMA do the
9 right things; that CMA is going to be helping LEPCs to do
10 the right things; that Texas A&M is going to be
11 publicizing, under their reputation, the value of this
12 aggregation of information; and the quality and trust and
13 integrity of this group. It's really important that we
14 try hard not to start betraying those trusts by changing
15 the tones that exist in this room, which is tones of
16 cooperation and assistance and support.
17 Now, what we want to do is stop arguing
18 about the data, and start discussing the solutions to the
19 problem.
20 Everything that's happened today is very
21 exciting. We're all going to get back to our own desks,
22 and we're going to have our own pressures, and we're going
23 to have our own responsibilities, and we're going to have
24 our own letters from our constituents that are going to
25 tell us we can't do this and we can't do that. But we
142
1 have to remember, between now and the time we get together
2 again, that we are committing ourselves in the national
3 interest, with integrity, honesty and trust, to move
4 forward with something that we can all be proud of.
5 And, you know, Sam, I think one of the
6 responsibilities we all have to this terrific institution
7 is that we maintain that integrity.
8 DR. MANNAN: I know. Thank you very
9 much, Jim. You said that very eloquently.
10 Anyone else? I guess we are pretty much
11 done for the day, and I'm pretty glad that we're ending on
12 such a note that Jim put together. I couldn't have put it
13 together better.
14 But I know it is hard, difficult to take the
15 emotions that we have gathered here back to our offices
16 and back to our desks; but let's try to do that and see if
17 we can keep the momentum actually going forward, with
18 honesty and integrity and devotion.
19 Thank you again, all, for coming. Let's all
20 give all ourselves a...(applause).
21
22 (Close of meeting)
23
24
25
For More Information Contact the Mary Kay O'Connor Process Safety Center Library at 979-458-1863