At a time when the industry is How does the company define

putting pressure on improving operational excellence and how far

operational efficiency, are there
concerns that focusing on effi-
ciency is not great from a safety
standpoint?
Priorities are often changed which is
why I always say our first priority is to
make money, but that we have to do
it safely. When you’re reducing head-
count that has to be managed in a
along are you on the OE journey?
Operational excellence is something
that the executive committee started
pushing in 2012. There were 12
business units within the company,
but there wasn’t a very transverse
approach so Arkema changed to be-
come more process-oriented, rather
than having individual business units

SAFETY CULTURE AT ARKEMA: safe manner. But, the more efficient

and reliable you can make a process,
FOCUSING ON CULTURE TO DRIVE the safer it becomes because you
have less downtime, and so fewer
OPERATIONAL EXCELLENCE unplanned events.
doing things their own way. I think
this helped by increasing overall
asset utilization and efficiency, and
some of the key indicators improved
steadily.

Exclusive interview with Paul
Leonard, Vice President of Health,
Safety and Environment at Arkema
Paul shares with us
Arkema’s journey to safety excel-
lence and how they became one
of the safest chemical companies
in the world.
Paul tell us a little about your
professional background.
I started my career as a chemical
engineer at Dow Chemical where I
stayed for 27 years, working in Ger-
many, France, Michigan, Texas and
China in various operations roles.
Only one of these years was spent
as a pure HSE person. Dow had an
Arkema is a major chemical manu- Can you tell us the strategic learn-
facturer based in 50 countries. Tell ing map program that you’ve been
us about the safety culture that working on at Arkema and how it
existed coming into your role as came about?
Head of HSE.
Initially, Arkema was not a $6 billion
When I joined in 2012, Arkema was company. It was 12x$500 million
engineer at Dow Chemical where
about six years old and they didn’t business units. When we talked
I stayed for 27 years, working in
have a very strong culture because about improving or aligning our
Germany, France, Michigan, Texas
they were still finding their feet. They approaches we said safety should
and China in various operations roles.
were spun off from Total in 2005 and be our first focus point because if we
Only one of those years was spent
went on the stock exchange 2006. can’t get people aligned on safety we
as a pure HSE person. Dow had an
At the beginning the first focus is sur- won’t get them aligned on anything.
extremely strong safety culture and I
vival, getting past the IPO and being My global team along with our HR
learned a lot there.
able to look to the future. partners started discussing how we
wanted to go about this and I looked
After my experience at Dow Chemi-
We’ve now gone from surviving to back to my work at Dow to see what
cal, I went to Arkema as their new
thriving, but along the way we had tools we had available.
HSE Manager. They were looking
to change how we looked at safety
for someone who had an opera-
culture. I had done a lot of work with an
tions background and international
outside expert in the past and knew
experience in Asia, the Americas and
instinctively that this was the tool we
Europe.
needed to roll out this program.

opexandriskmanagement.iqpc.com
We explained to them what we
wanted to do and they came with
proposals. Then we got about 12
people together for two days of
intense evaluation where we came
up with the image of the mountain
which represented the mindset that
we wanted to achieve:
“Going to the goal, the
top of the mountain,
with a zero is possible”
That’s the tag line we used along the
way. With the graphic and pedagog-
ic input from our outside partner, we
were able to develop the Learning
Map and the global HSE team pro-
vided all the background information
that we used for the program.
This was a complex deployment
with 14,000 people to be trained
in 40 different countries over 12
months. Tell us about some of
the specific challenges you had to
overcome.
Once we received the first draft of
the program we did a pilot in the
three geographies, North America,
Europe and Asia and used the feed-
back to finalize the learning map.
We then trained over 300 people in
different languages, with a ‘train the
trainer’ approach.
The biggest thing was trying to get
as much diversity in the teams as
possible, because this is usually done
with a facilitator and about eight
to ten people around a table. With
14,000 people that meant we had
1,600 individual sessions of about 2.5
hours.
It caught on quickly and people were
really impressed at this new innova-
tive approach. They weren’t coming
to a strategic session where they
were going to be killed by Power-
Points, it was very interactive. We
didn’t really run into any road bumps.
Once people received the training
they were so enthusiastic that it
spread like wildfire and people were
pushing to get into the training.
One of the challenges you faced
was shifting ownership of safety
from leaders to everyone in the
organization. How have you been
able to do that?
I think the Learning Map helped
because the focus was on show-
ing people where accidents were
happening. We had three elements:
technical, organizational and human
behavior. The data provided by the
map showed that over 80% of our
accidents were caused by human
behavior. This really helped to get our
employees thinking about behaviors
rather than technical or organization
issues - as this was the area where
the major issue lied.
opexandriskmanagement.iqpc.com
What impact has this had on the
business and its reliability and
financial performance?
We have reduced the number of
accidents by over 60%: 2011 finished
at TRIR of 4.4 and within four years
we were at a TRIR of 1.5. We came
up with a five word mission which
was: Helping People Prevent Un-
planned Events- the focus being on
helping. My organization was there
to help and not in a policing func-
tion. This meant there was a much
more collaborative approach with
the businesses, and they were happy
to see the team come in to help and
provide other tools that would help
them reduce incidents.
In the third quarter of 2017 we
have just reported record results for
the group. Reliability has gone up,
operational excellence has improved
and so has return on investment.
This just proves that if we do safety
and operational excellence right, the
reliability, quality and everything else
goes well.
It’s also about learning how to write
better operating procedures and pro-
vide better training- all with a focus
on eliminating unplanned events.
From a procedure management
standpoint, is that something that
you’ve been working on with your
teams at the plant and facility
level?
We’re pushing a procedure use
policy which wasn’t initially strict
and organized at Arkema. We’re now
issuing directives and guidelines
on how procedures should be used,
and there is now a whole movement
around usability: writing procedures
opexandriskmanagement.iqpc.com
and instructions that can be used.
What about the topic of digitizing
procedures?
Much of the software available we’ve
never looked at before, but there’s so
much out there that can make things
easier and safer for everybody. There
are options where you can come
with your iPad or iPhone and there’s
a beacon, and it brings up a picture
of the prompt for the operating pro-
cedure. There is a whole lot of work
in this area. The challenge is in trying
to find out exactly where we want to
go with all this technology and com-
ing up with a technology roadmap
for HSE and how we want to apply it.
Where does operational excellence
sit at Arkema? Do you, as head of
HSE, have responsibility for oe?
There’s actually a Vice President for
operational excellence. We’re on the
same team, reporting to the same
executive committee member, the
Executive VP for Manufacturing, but
we do have an operational excel-
lence group.
However, as it’s my background I
tend to get involved and get asked
for my opinion, which I give freely.
Wh ere does the overall responsi-
bility for the company’s manage-
ment system sit?
Our management system, what we
call AIMS (Arkema Integrated Man-
agement System), sits in my organi-
zation and I have one person who
helps to co-ordinate that.
This was set up before I came but I
think it is done very well. The man-
agement system audits all of the
plants, for example, the three year
audit would have five auditors in a
typical plant for a week.
Two of the auditors come from DNV
GL to provide the external certifica-
tion. When the audit is finished the
plant is ISO certified as well as up to
date on all the Arkema requirements.
What’s next for Arkema on its jour-
ney to becoming the safest chemi-
cal company in the world?
We’re looking at preparing for what
we call Safety Academy Two which
will incorporate things like wellness,
looking after one another and peer
to peer observations. We will also fo-
cus more on Safety 24/7 for individu-
als at work, at home and driving.
We’re also doing a lot of work with
neuroscientists to understand how
the brain works and how that im-
pacts the way we work. This ap-
proach tells us that we don’t make
mistakes because we’re bad, but
because we’re good and that’s a
concept that we want to teach our
people.
 Paul Leonard will be speaking more about
Arkema’s journey to safety excellence at the
2018 Operational Excellence & Risk Manage-
ment Summit.
Paul will share how, following several major acquisitions, the
company focused on safety culture and managed to keep a cohe-
sive safety strategy across 50 countries to become one of the safest
chemical companies in the world.
In his session Paul will address:
• How to shift ownership of safety to everyone in the organization
• Arkema’s Strategic Learning Map and Safety Academy
• How Arkema managed to train 14,000 people in 40 countries
in just over 12 months
• What’s next on Arkema’s journey to safety excellence
opexandriskmanagement.iqpc.com
WANT TO LEARN MORE ABOUT NEXT GENERATION
SAFETY, RELIABILITY AND ENVIRONMENTAL
EXCELLENCE STRATEGIES?
North America’s ONLY event entirely dedicated to Operational
Excellence and Risk Management in hazardous industries is
returning to Houston on February 7-9, 2018!
Balancing operational efficiency with risk management isn’t
easy. With markets shifting, regulations changing and pressure
to increase efficiency in your operations - how can you best
manage human, asset and environmental risk and deliver
consistent operational excellence?
The Operational Excellence & Risk Management Summit will
bring together over 150 heads of HSE, Operations, Operational
Excellence and Asset Management at this executive level sum-
mit for three days packed with workshops, case studies, round-
tables and panels.
There is no better opportunity this year to network with so
many industry experts from Andeavor, Veolia, Chevron, Gaz-
prom, Arkema, Wood Group, BP, American Water and many
more – all presenting at the event and there to answer your
most pressing questions.
DOWNLOAD THE 2018 AGENDA