Transforming safety culture at one of the Gulf Coast’s largest petrochemical facilities
How a major petrochemical complex used JMJ’s IIF™ safety approach to rebuild trust, align contractors, and dramatically improve safety performance
1.6M
Labor hours without a recordable injury
CHALLENGE
Our client operates one of the Gulf Coast’s largest petrochemical facilities, spanning nearly 3,900 acres and employing around 2,000 people. The site includes two integrated facilities that produce base chemicals and derivatives. Its IIF engagement included an initial implementation, followed by a turnaround project.
Following a bankruptcy, employee trust in leadership was low. Communication gaps, benefit changes, and unresolved tensions had weakened engagement across the 3,900-acre site. While incident rates were acceptable, leadership recognized that lingering morale issues could threaten performance and safety outcomes.
Complicating matters, the client was managing the largest turnaround in its history. With 3,000 tradespeople from 30 contractor companies working around the clock in close proximity, the combination of live systems,and tight deadlines significantly increased the risk of injury and communication breakdowns
SOLUTION
Culture shift across the site
JMJ engaged the entire site in its IIF safety approach, starting with deep listening. Through surveys, interviews, and facilitated sessions, employees shared honest feedback with leadership, helping surface issues such as communication challenges, frustrations with top-down decisions, and the need for leadership to show care and accountability.
IIF Commitment Workshops™ involved over 1,200 employees, laying the foundation for shared ownership of safety. A cross-functional IIF leadership team helped embed the new culture at all levels.
To help turn cultural values into daily habits, the site introduced three simple practices known as “critical moves”:
- Meet someone new every day: to strengthen personal connections across the site
- Ask for what you need: to encourage open communication and support
- Own and explain the “why”: to increase accountability and transparency
These behaviors made the safety culture more personal and relatable and helped break down silos. Leadership also invested in tangible improvements:
- Addressed long-neglected repairs
- Upgraded contractor facilities
- Formed a joint contractor-owner steering committee
To reinforce two-way communication, a “You Speak, We Listen” campaign invited feedback from workers and publicly responded with action updates via newsletters and videos.
Turnaround leadership and contractor alignment
To prepare for the high-risk turnaround, JMJ facilitated two-day leadership alignment sessions for managers and contractor leaders to co-create a shared safety vision. Front-line supervisors also received focused IIF orientation on safety commitment and communication to build consistency across shifts and organizations.
Early in the project, five recordable injuries occurred within the first week, raising immediate concerns. Leadership quickly regrouped, applying insights from the IIF approach to diagnose issues, recalibrate communication, and take targeted action. Early interventions reset the tone, enabling a safe and collaborative completion of the project.
CLIENT GOALS
Site Engagement:
- Create a step change in overall safety results, moving from a safety performance that was good to one where no one was getting hurt
- Define what was needed to improve safety performance
- Enhance interaction and communication among site personnel
- Integrate IIF approach with the existing safety campaign
- Something about transforming the operational culture
Turnaround Project:
- Execute the $110M turnaround without incidents or injuries and with no process safety events
- Complete the work in 60 days as close to budget as possible
- Align over 35,000 resident and non-resident workers, contractors, operations and technical support staff
- Ensure there was no gap in communication between managers and workers
- Effectively communicate that all turnaround employees from all contracted companies were cared for and safe
Everybody felt comfortable speaking their mind. By JMJ driving it as a neutral third party, we got feedback we never would have gotten if we tried to do it ourselves.
Safety activities we've had before were much more traditional. This [approach] was more of an interactive development of a plan.
RESULTS
The IIF approach helped reinvigorate the safety culture by connecting people across the site, rebuilding trust, and improving communication. The integration with the existing safety program, supported by simple daily practices and visible leadership action, created a more open, engaged workforce. As communication improved, so did morale, and safety performance followed. The site set a new record for time worked without a recordable injury and achieved its best TRIR in years.
During the turnaround project, early challenges were addressed quickly through aligned leadership and focused interventions. The rest of the project was completed within 42 days without a single recordable injury, totaling more than 1.6 million safe labor hours.
Key takeaways
- Alignment between contractors and site leadership was essential to turnaround success.
- “Critical moves” embedded cultural change into daily behavior
- Empowering employees to speak up improved both safety and morale
- A strong safety culture can impact performance far beyond compliance metrics
Turnaround success
1.6M labor hours without recordable injury
Safety record
144 days without a recordable incident
TRIR improvement
0.30- best in years
Safety vision
5,000+ workers aligned with under one safety vision