(57ci) Integrating Culture into Process Safety Assurance and Investigations

Purpose: PETRONAS embarked on a group-wide culture transformation program in 2015 as a response to the global oil price crisis, and is now part of an overall transformation effort to achieve specific key results, R2 by the year 2020. The program introduced the concept of the Results Pyramid® and a Culture of Accountability® i.e. a workplace culture where people take accountability to think and act in the manner necessary to achieve results.

This paper will discuss how the Results Pyramid® and its tools have been incorporated into process safety activities across PETRONAS Chemicals Group Berhad (PCGB), a group of PETRONAS subsidiaries involved primarily in the manufacturing, marketing and selling of a diverse range of petrochemical products. These activities have been designed, facilitated and deployed in collaboration with PETRONAS Downstream Business Excellence, making them replicable across other operating units in PETRONAS.

Methodology: The Results Pyramid® consists of four layers, starting with Experiencse, creating Beliefs that drive Actions, ultimately producing Results at the top of the pyramid. The combination of the 3 bottom layers (Experiences, Beliefs and Actions) defines the organisation culture. Hence, for an organisation to move from its current performance results, R1, to the aspired key results, R2, it needs to shift from the current culture or way of working, C1, to a new culture, C2.

The paper will explore the concept of Results Pyramid® further and compare it to the traditional Safety Pyramid and Tripod Beta incident investigation methodology. It will then show examples of how this concept is incorporated into an assurance exercise, and the application of culture management tools in the follow-up actions derived from the assurance.

In the assurance activity, culture subject matter experts were assigned to observe plant leadership teams and front-liners during interviews and site verifications conducted by the technical assessors. The observations were synthesised into belief statements, which were presented together with the technical findings. A similar approach was used for incident investigations using Tripod Beta, where the results are presented in the form of a Result Pyramid.

The second activity is a Joint Accountability conversation branded as ‘Power Up’, designed to incorporate powerful and specific feedback exchange between various teams, culminating in a specific list of actions to improve delivery of each team’s activities in order to achieve the shared key results. This conversation can be done either as a follow-up to the assurance activity, in relation to an ongoing transformation program or as a standalone activity.

Results: Examples of observations, feedback exchanges and specific actions from these activities will be shared, together with the impact on process safety leading and lagging indicators as a result of these actions. Recommended practices and lessons learnt for continuous improvement will also be included.

Conclusion: Applying the Results Pyramid® concept to the design and implementation of Process Safety programs has helped to identify the underlying leadership, mindset and behaviour issues impacting their success. By doing so, more specific interventions can be put in place to ensure full compliance to safety requirements and maximise effectiveness of these programs.