Development and Deployment of a Contractor Safety Management Program for Chevron Environmental Management Company

Abstract

For Chevron Environmental Management Company (CEMC)—the operating company responsible for managing remediation, restoration and infrastructure abandonment projects around the world—contractor safety management (CSM) is critical. With a total workforce that is 90% contracted and which works over 3 million hours annually on many diverse project sites around the world, the safety performance of our third party suppliers is fundamental to our success. CEMC followed Chevron's Contractor Health, Environment and Safety Management (CHESM) Expectations—a component of Chevron's Operational Excellence Management System ¹ (OEMS)—as a model to establish an effective program. This paper will describe Chevron's CHESM Expectations and will tell the story of CEMC's development, deployment and improvement of its own CHESM process—first in North Amercia and now globally. Introduction Chevron Environmental Management Company (CEMC) is a service company within the Chevron Corporation responsible for infrastructure abandonment and environmental remediation from Chevron operations around the world. CEMC work products include environmental assessment and monitoring, onshore and offshore facility deconstruction, well plug and abandonment, excavation, construction and operation of soil and groundwater remediation systems. Within the Chevron Corporation, CEMC is developing a reputation for excellence in project management and contractor management. CEMC is experiencing rapid growth in global operations such that EMC's business has more than doubled in the past four years. Currently, CEMC employs 175 full time staff and has the equivalent of 2000 contractor personnel. This adds up to over three million workforce hours expected in 2007. CEMC is striving to achieve world-class safety performance, but we see three key challenges to this:○Our workforce is highly leveraged with contract companies○Our workforce is geographically and functionally diverse; working on projects from major excavations in downtown San Francisco to offshore well plug and abandonment in the Gulf of Mexico to environmental projects in Zambia, Benin and dozens of other countries around the globe○The safety culture and performance of the remedial construction industry lags behind the standards of our clients, the Chevron upstream and downstream operating companies. Bringing our contractors up to CEMC standards requires a systematic and consistent effort From its inception in 1998, CEMC has had strong elements of contractor safety management including engaged leadership, many good contractors and strong project management skills. However, prior to 2005, CEMC had no systematic process to ensure consistency across its operations and continual improvement of safety performance. In 2001/2002, CEMC executed a strategic sourcing effort that cut the number of contractors it worked with by 50%. In late 2003, CEMC undertook a rigorous review of its contractor safety management program.