Handling & Safety Matters Focus on: Health & Safety 32 | Plant & Works Engineering www.pwemag.co.uk August/September 2024 Ensuring health and safety in the workplace is critical for operational excellence and employee wellbeing. PWE explores how Air Products, a global gases manufacturer, is striving to achieve zero accidents worldwide by implementing a standardised Environment, Health, and Safety (EHS) management system across its diverse international operations. Prioritising health and safety isn’t just a regulatory obligation – it’s a cornerstone of operational excellence and employee wellbeing. Beyond protecting workers from harm, a strong safety culture boosts morale and productivity. It enhances a business’ reputation, attracts top talent and contributes towards strong customer relationships. In essence, its smart business, paving the way for a resilient and thriving sector but operationally it can be complex. If a business is spread across the globe in vastly diverse geographies like Air Products, the scale quickly multiplies. Air Products is a global gases manufacturer, employing more than 20,000 people across various geographies. One of its strategic corporate priorities is to become the world’s safest industrial gas supplier, aiming for zero accidents worldwide. A simple enough goal, but one that needs immense dedication in tackling health and safety practices, cultures and regulations across its operations regardless of where they are located. To ensure safety standards across countries are aligned, the business implements its own global environment health and safety management system. One system for everywhere Air Products has been operating for over 80 years and in the early 1980s its incident rate was on par with other industry leaders, and high by today's standards. In the 1990s and 2000s, the business began introducing various standards and health and safety management systems focusing on the three Es – evaluation, education and enforcement, which significantly reduced the incident rate. The lost time injury (LTI) figure for fiscal 2023 was 0.9 – an impressive 63% reduction from 2014, and 0.29 for recordable accidents, a 50% improvement in the same 10-year period. Initially each of its business units – electronics or chemical gases for example – had its own systems, each at different levels of maturity. The need to remove complexity and focus on the end goal of a safer workplace was the trigger to standardise and globalise these systems. Almost immediately the health and safety team saw significant improvements. “We saw a step change as we rolled out the global EHS management system but it didn’t come without challenges”, said Mark Garrett, the EHS and Quality Director for Europe and Africa at Air Products. He added: “While Europe and North America were relatively mature, regions such as Asia and Africa were a series of phases behind where we were as a company. A global EHS system to bring all areas to the same level was vital.” The case study In May 2023, Air Products invested $1bn in a gas-to-liquid processing facility known as UzGTL, in the Qashqadaryo Province in Uzbekistan, owned by the Uzbek state gas company Uzbekneftegaz. Within the UzGTL complex, Air Products acquired and now owns and operates the two largest air separation units in its own portfolio, the two world’s largest auto-thermal reforming units, and a hydrogen production unit supplying oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen and syngas to the gas-to-liquid transformation process. As the end product, the UzGTL facility produces more than 1.5 million tons of high-valueadded synthetic fuel per year. Along with these assets came more than 150 local employees, who had joined as young engineers and matured with the company as it moved from concept all the way to commissioning. Ensuring global health and safety standards in manufacturing
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