(46b) Contact Energy Process Safety - "Our Story". How Leadership and Staff Engagement Ensured That "Safe to Run" Was a Fundamental Culture Change Supported By System and Process Changes

This paper tells the story of Contact Energy’s Process Safety improvement journey and how this has changed our company culture and delivered success and improvements in all areas of our business. The paper will describe how the concept of “Safe to Run” represented a shift in thinking and allowed process safety to be positioned as a fundamental way of doing business. Although the Safe to Run Programme had 22 individual process safety improvement projects, it was recognised from the start that while processes and procedures are important, it’s people that make the real difference. The paper will describe how we gave our leaders the tools and confidence to lead a culture change and how engagement is at the heart of sustained improvement. We used front line subject matter experts to design, test and implement the changes, creating a culture of ownership and empowerment. The paper also describes how the change started from the top with executive buy in and leadership.

Simplifying processes and language of communication were one of the keys to success and we will describe the success of visualising “Chance”.

The paper will finally describe the change from Safe to Run as a Project, into "Continuous Improvement" as the core of business as usual