During the first year, an Ethylene Cracker's OSHA Recordable Injury Rate fell by 52%. By the end of 2008 the sites Total Recordable Injury Rate (inclusive of contractors) was 0.05 per 200,000 hrs worked.

Olefin 6 processes some 3m tonnes of hydrocarbon, and produces Olefins Ethylene, Propylene and Butadiene.

Prior to B-Safe^® the plant had been 8 years without a reportable injury. However, people were still being hurt. 90% of these minor injuries were related to 'unsafe behaviors' and Olefins 6 wanted to improve these.

The plant's management team looked for an experienced behavioral safety vendor who could relate with 'blue collar' union workers. After inviting vendors to talk with the shift teams, B-Safe^® was awarded the contract.

Training
A plant project team were trained over a five day period to implement B-Safe^®. This included background information on behavioral principles, incident analysis, checklist development, observer training, goal-setting, feedback, observation data-entry and analysis.

Checklist Development
The project began with an analysis of incident records for the previous two years. The safe behaviors identified from the analysis were placed on ‘observation checklists’. These were approved by the workforce prior to use by trained observers.

Process
Trained observers monitored people on the plant for 10-20 minutes a day for two weeks, to find out how safe people actually worked. Once known, shift personnel set a safety improvement target to be achieved within six months. Observers continued to monitor daily and gave feedback when observing people and at weekly feedback meetings.

The project team also relentlessly followed up any corrective actions. They changed checklists and observers every six months and repeated the process, baseline, goal-setting and feedback.

Other business units on site such as Storage & Distribution and Shipping became involved as the plant gained experience. Then B-Safe^® was rolled out to long-term maintenance, lagging and scaffolding contractors, repeating the same process as the Olefins 6 shift teams.

Results
During the first year, the OSHA Recordable Injury Rate fell by 52%. After 6 years the site achieved and has maintained a Zero OSHA Recordable Injury Rate, inclusive of contractor companies.

Other tangible benefits include $500,000 per annum energy cost-saving and a 32 percent reduction in insurance premiums.

In 2004, the plant received a Diamond Award in recognition of their safety performance over the previous 5 years from the Chemical Industry Association (CIA).