Page 10 - Suncor 360

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FEATURE
MAY 2014
360

The road is long,

but the Journey makes us safer

Any journey, especially a long road

Since starting the on safety and return to our Journey to Zero roots,"
Journey to Zero,
says Frankie Fuchs, director of EH&S central safety
trip, has its good times and
we’ve reached a services. “That means working with operational
remarkable milestone.
discipline, continuing to address any potential

workplace hazards and recognizing the many things challenging times.
Recordable injury frequency (RIF)*
we already do right.”
is almost half what it was in 2010.

And that’s something to be proud of.
Safety is a way of life

But our company has been shaken in recent months
Journey to Zero is more than a program or a with fatalities in Oil Sands & In Situ. These incidents

campaign. It’s a culture and a way of life that are tragic reminders for us all.
goes back to a powerful conversation about
“The challenge is in front of us every day,” says
safety that took place in the late 1990s.
Colin Foley, VP, environment, health & safety (EH&S).
We had some near-miss events, and our “Although we’ve made substantial progress, we’re

safety culture wasn’t where it needed to be. not there yet, and we can never be complacent. The
Without an aggressive intervention, matters fact we’ve had fatalities tells us that we have a lot of

would only get worse.
road left to travel.”

That’s when senior management began asking, Overall RIF is currently at 0.56, conirming that we’re
“What if we embraced the idea of striving for sending fewer people for medical treatment. But

zero injuries?”
when you translate the number in human terms, it
means we are still sending one person to hospital
Changing our culture started with identifying the
out of every 200 people every year.
good, the bad and the ugly of the existing state.
It meant deining what was required to achieve "Whether we are celebrating a milestone or

zero, using ‘future state visioning workshops.’ It supporting each other during time of loss, we owe it
meant linking operational discipline and
to our co-workers and family to sharpen our focus

Timeline
2000
2002
2003
2007
Directive by then-CEO Suncor hires safety First President’s Suncor receives
Rick George to deine experts DuPont Operational Excellence Canadian Association
future state of safety
Sustainable Solutions to Awards session
of Petroleum Producers

Planning starts for help develop strategy; (CAPP) President's
President’s Operational early wording mentions 2005
Award for embedding
‘Towards Zero’
Devastating ire our safety culture into
Excellence Awards
every aspect of the
Start of Suncor’s safety Journey to Zero kicks off encases the upgrader
with safety perception in ice and cuts business through
moments at meetings
survey across each production by half for Journey to Zero
eight months.
RIF is 2.25
business unit
2008
Employees participate Thankfully, no injuries
occur (January)
RIF is 1.07
in Future State
Visioning workshop
RIF is 1.70

RIF is 2.18