Page 8 - Suncor 360

06

FEATURE
MAY 2014
360

OUR JOURNEY TO ZERO

Time to refocus, reinforce and renew

360 sat down with Mark Little, EVP, Upstream, to discuss safety performance and the serious

incidents we’ve seen in Oil Sands & In Situ this year.

Q: This year’s fatalities have shaken has allowed us to put more structure and Q: The speciic incidents will be

employees. Many are left to wonder discipline in our operations. For example, if investigated thoroughly, but can you
how this is happening in a workplace you look at our compliance around talk about the other work underway to

where safety is said to be our irst pressure equipment, we’ve made help us better understand and learn

value and such a high priority. How signiicant improvements in the name of from these fatalities?
do you respond?
safety in recent years. But we can’t ever get
Mark: Yes, the Oil Sands leadership team
complacent. We must continue to be
Mark: Well, safety is our core value and vigilant about adhering to the procedures has decided to form a joint task force with
highest priority. That’s not in question. But Suncor executive leadership and union
and standards that we’ve set. We must
these tragic incidents have shaken our work with operational discipline, and leadership. Together, we want to better
conidence in our position and sense of understand how to move forward and how
onboard our people so they are clear about
progress. One of the challenges we are all what these behaviours mean at Suncor. We we can refocus, reinforce and renew our
faced with is how can safety be our commitment to the Journey to Zero. There
must ensure that our people have the right
absolute top value in the company and yet equipment and the right procedures in are three key questions that this taskforce
will work to answer.
we still have signiicant incidents. That is place, and that everything works together
the question that our entire leadership to achieve a safe outcome every day. A lot
1) Are there commonalities and threads
team and our organization need to focus of this is happening already. We know that
on. This is about all of us. This value has to because we have seen better control of our that cut across the signiicant incidents?

be the same for every single person on our business, a lower number of signiicant 2) How can our general safety
journey. We will only achieve this when we
incidents, improved safety performance performance be improving and yet we
are aligned and caring for each other. and fewer injuries overall in the workplace. still have these critical incidents? This is
Safety above all else.
The issue is that we’ve had two fatalities an area of study that has gone on
and some other signiicant injuries in
Q: When incidents like the ones we’ve amongst a number of companies within
seen happen, it’s natural to wonder if 2014 – and that’s concerning to everyone. the industry. We had spent time prior to
Our focus now needs to be on
we’re doing all we can to stay safe. Shane Daye’s fatality on April 20
Are there things that Suncor and our understanding why this is happening and discussing and thinking through how
we will be going through a process to that
individual employees and contractors we might move this forward. We’ll look
end. But, in the meantime, and always, I at what others are learning and how we
should be doing differently?
urge our people to look out for each other,
can use that to eliminate signiicant
Mark: Make no mistake; we are doing a lot to be diligent in every task every day, and incidents in our workplace.
stay committed to making every single day
of things right. And we have been very
encouraged by some of the progress we’ve an injury-free day at Suncor.
3) The third focus is to have a full
engagement with the Oil Sands
seen. Our focus on operational excellence
workforce, and ask the question: