Safety
Transforming industry average in forefront position
In terms of traditional safety para-meters, such as accident frequency, Proviron was close to the Belgian chemical industry average in 2006. This, by the way, is a lot better than the figures of the whole of the Belgian manufacturing industry. But industry average is not good enough in our philosophy. In the area of safety too, we aim at belonging to the leaders of the pack. An awareness campaign, prepared in 2006, will be released in the near future, involving management as well as shop floor personnel.
Frequence Proviron versus Chemical industry and Belgium
Frequence = number of accidents per million hours exposed
To measure is to know
Regained employee stability (e.g. after the re-introduction of the technical services in Proviron), will help to increase safety awareness. A more scrupulous application of the existing permit system will have to demonstrate convincingly the company’s commitment to the safety of personnel and local residents. To state the obvious, safety on the shop floor is also the result of fundamental safety awareness during all actions and all technical operations.
Possible grounds for adjustment will be registered faster and will be more adequately acted upon. The introduction of an electronic safety register will help us respond faster and more accurately.
Every unit will be able to better quantify the safety situation and evolution as we provide safety scores on a multitude of parameters. These innovations will be fully effective in 2007.
Infrastructure and installations
By introducing a totally new organised access control in Ostend, we have increased the general safety, both in terms of transport and in terms of the registration of who is present on the site. This helped us to refine existing intervention plans. In addition, we renewed equipment for emergency notification and alerting. For the new biodiesel unit we trained employees with the help of a powerful three-dimensional computer program, which allowed working practice in an almost live environment before the actual unit was built. Automation of some installations required the adaptation of the operators’ working methods.
Communication
Good intentions, plans, analyses and procedures can only have the desired result when communication is optimum. The right information must reach the right employee at the right time. All involved must put this information into practice - an ongoing challenge.