Guidelines for Owner’s Contractor HES Forums

The purpose of an owner’s Contractor HES Forum is to continually improve contractor HES performance at the owner’s site.This system is in place to document and communicate results of field HES audits of maintenance and construction activities, share lessons learned, discuss recent incidents/accidents and their findings, discuss status of current initiatives, discuss/plan for upcoming shut downs/turn around needs, communicate procedural/program changes, etc. Other responsibilities of this forum includes development of contractor suggestion programs, behavioral based safety observation programs, establish contractor HES goals and other activities to contribute toward continuous improvement of contractor overall performance.

The forum can be sponsored by the owner or contractors at a minimum frequency of monthly.The forum meetings usually are scheduled at the beginning of the work day to prevent work interruption.The forum should be composed of owner HES representative(s), owner contract administrator(s), contractor site managers and contractor HES representatives.A representative from the local Contractor Safety Council also adds value to these forums.

During turn arounds/shut downs a modified version of the forum could/should be held daily to address specific problems, provide suggestions/answers to the problems, review specific work that require exclusion of all personnel to prevent injury in the event something goes wrong (i.e, critical lifts, hydro blasting, pigging operations, non-destructive testing work with radiation sources, etc.), and generally communicate owners’ expectations on the work being performed.

Typical agenda items for the forums could include:

·Self introductions

·Site HES statistics – discuss safety and environmental statistics. Statistics should include TIR (Total Incident Ratio), TRIR (Total Recordable Incident Ratio), LWDIR (Lost Work Day Incident Ratio) data of the owner, the contractors and a combined owner/contractor statistic.Trends should be evaluated for high emphasis campaigns.Proactive leading indicators should be discussed to in efforts to control potential losses; incident root causes should be reviewed for trends and effectiveness.Contractor deficiencies can be used as focus topics for safety audits.

·Lessons learned from recent incidents – owners and contractor each discuss lessons learned from incidents that can add value to each other’s performance.

·Contractor suggestions – discuss new contractor suggestions and follow-up of open suggestion.

·Safety audit items – discuss new items found during owner and contractor safety field audits and follow-up of open items.

·Safety topic – an assigned forum member will present a pre-determined topic on safety or a program identified as a best practice.

·Future safety events – discuss upcoming seminars, training, safety & health fairs, OSHA VPP certification/recertification, regulatory inspections (TCEQ, OSHA, EPA), etc.

·Owner concerns – owner discusses recent changes to requirements or safety programs/procedures; discuss key issues for current or upcoming projects, turn arounds/critical/dangerous work, etc.

·Contractor concerns – contractors discuss recent concerns that prevent them from working safely and/or efficiently.

·Summary – summarize key issues and review action items.

Preparation for the meeting is key to meeting time constraints.Meeting minutes including all presentations should be forwarded to all forum members and attendees to cascade information down through their organizations.