Step for safety: petrochemists hold forum of occupational safety inspectors
Exchange of best practices
On the eve of World Day for Safety and Health at Work, Nizhnekamskneftekhim organised an away forum of occupational safety and health inspectors. A delegation from SIBUR Trade Union and the Tatarstan office of the Russian Chemists’ Trade Union attended the event, which lasted for two days, to exchange the best practices and experience in occupational safety and health and process safety. Activists of trade unions — workers of Kazanorgsintez and TGC-16 — participated in the forum too.
On day one of the forum, the guests visited key factories of Nizhnekamskneftekhim, talked with line managers, representatives of the occupational and process safety service.
A total of 219 occupational safety and health inspectors — representatives of the trade union — work at Nizhnekamskneftekhim. Every day they make rounds, deliver reports, pass information to a shop foreman about the state of workplaces, consult their colleagues about occupational safety. Moreover, they do this voluntarily besides their main job.
“Care about our workers’ health, labour, creation of comfortable and safe conditions is an important area of Nizhnekamskneftekhim. Occupational safety and health inspectors are not indifferent people who make a big contribution to providing safety in workplaces. They help to effectively organise the process from a perspective of safety,” noted Production Director of Nizhnekamskneftekhim Marat Falyakhov.
Vector of openness
The forum was summed up on day two at The Youth camp. Special attention was paid to the cooperation between the occupational and process safety service and inspectors of the trade union. They talked about a system of organising the job on occupational safety at SIBUR Trade Union, main focuses in 2022.
“Yesterday we were in the factory, got acquainted with the work of line managers, occupational safety inspectors, learnt a lot of interesting practices. Today we want to share ours. We hope their use will allow achieving zero traumatism in the enterprise,” said Chief Technical Labour Inspector at SIBUR Trade Union Sergey Pasechnik.
Among the best practices of Nizhnekamskneftekhim, Sergey Pasechnik noted the additions made to existing individual protective equipment norms and the contest Best Occupational Safety and Health Inspector.
“Also, I liked the mobile app My Neftekhim where any worker of the enterprise can find important information, including about occupational safety. For this, one just needs to go to the personal account in the mobile app. The terms of use of individual protective equipment in a specific profession and much more can be seen there,” specified the chief occupational safety inspector of SIBUR Trade Union.
The work of Nizhnekamskneftekhim in occupational and process safety in 2021 was summed at the forum too. No fatal accident, group accident was registered last year, emergencies were avoided too.
“To rule out traumatism and emergencies, corporate safety programmes were created. A job is done to introduce local safety norms of SIBUR into the practice of Nizhnekamskneftekhim’s operation,” said Andrey Khristoforov, head of the Department of Report and Methodical Job on Occupational Safety at Nizhnekamskneftekhim PJSC.
He also noted that in 2020 the enterprise adopted a vector of openness when it comes to the registration of accidents. It is important to register all accidents, analyse them, learn their cause and take actions aimed to prevent analogous accidents from happening in the future.
Apart from this, Production Control information and analytic system was introduced at Nizhnekamskneftekhim, thus automating the collection of data on all preventive inspections both workers of the company itself and representatives of watchdogs do. Also, there was launched an electronic work permit for very dangerous works.
Most importantly, the petrochemists note, the attitude of people to a risky behaviour in the factory started to change. People started to be more responsible about safety issues and following occupational safety rules.