How do in­dus­try lead­ers learn, em­pow­er and sus­tain when it comes to health, safe­ty, se­cu­ri­ty and the en­vi­ron­ment (HSSE) in the work­place?

One way, ac­cord­ing to Arthur Alexan­der, se­nior health, safe­ty, en­vi­ron­ment and car­bon (HSE+C) man­ag­er at bpTT, is by en­sur­ing greater trans­paren­cy with re­gard to health and safe­ty breach­es in the work­place.

“We need to talk about in­ves­ti­ga­tions and make the re­sults from those in­ves­ti­ga­tions a lot more trans­par­ent and then share those across the in­dus­try so we can all learn and all build those learn­ings in­to the man­age­ment sys­tems of all of our var­i­ous com­pa­nies,” Alexan­der told the Busi­ness Guardian.

He made the com­ments fol­low­ing day one of Am­cham T&T’s HSSE Con­fer­ence and Ex­hi­bi­tion which was held at the Hy­att Re­gency on Tues­day.

Alexan­der al­so not­ed that col­lab­o­ra­tion among en­ti­ties was key.

“For me, it is how can we ral­ly around and learn from each oth­er and share those learn­ings be­cause one in­ci­dent at one in­di­vid­ual’s op­er­a­tions, we can all learn from that and we can all con­tribute to those learn­ings and we take that as a tremen­dous re­spon­si­bil­i­ty across the in­dus­try,” he added.

Re­gard­ing the ef­fi­cien­cy of the Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health Au­thor­i­ty and Agency (OS­HA), Alexan­der said he recog­nised the role of OS­HA, adding that en­ti­ties have al­so recog­nised the need to re­port.

“I think that is go­ing fair­ly well. I ac­tu­al­ly think the leg­is­la­tion works re­al­ly well and they are fine as they are,” he said.

Alexan­der said com­pa­nies like bpTT not on­ly have a tremen­dous re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to the health and safe­ty of work­ers, but al­so to the gen­er­al cit­i­zen­ry of this coun­try as he re­it­er­at­ed the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of cap­tains in the var­i­ous in­dus­tries is to safe­guard their em­ploy­ees.

“As play­ers in the in­dus­try, it is our re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to make sure we do the best for our em­ploy­ees and make sure our man­age­ment sys­tems are strong, make sure our lead­ers are em­pow­ered, make sure we are sus­tain­ing those sys­tems in a way such that any­body who comes on­to our fa­cil­i­ties works well to­geth­er and make sure they get home safe­ly,” Alexan­der fur­ther ad­vised.

He al­so not­ed that “op­er­a­tions dis­ci­pline” is vi­tal­ly im­por­tant as it equates to an or­gan­i­sa­tion be­ing con­sis­tent.

“There is al­ways op­por­tu­ni­ty for us to learn from our chal­lenges, but we can al­so learn from our suc­cess­es and share those across the in­dus­try,” Alexan­der added.

The theme of this year’s con­fer­ence was “Learn, Em­pow­er and Sus­tain.”

Dur­ing the event Stu­art Fran­co, pres­i­dent of Am­cham T&T, al­so recog­nised those who lost their lives, in re­cent times, to trag­ic work­place ac­ci­dents.

“We must do more. We must do bet­ter. We must con­tin­ue to pri­ori­tise health and safe­ty in every as­pect of our op­er­a­tions to en­sure we keep our peo­ple safe,” he said.

At Am­cham T&T’s An­nu­al HSSE Awards Cer­e­mo­ny, Min­is­ter of Labour Stephen Mc Clashie, shared some sta­tis­tics from of OS­HA dur­ing the fis­cal year 2022 to 2023 which not­ed that there were 25 le­gal pros­e­cu­tions; 51 re­port­ed crit­i­cal ac­ci­dents and 15 fa­tal of ac­ci­dents aris­ing from the work­place.

Stat­ing that these num­bers were sim­ply way too high, Fran­co added, “Right now, there is no doubt that we are wrestling with some big prob­lems. In­stead of los­ing hope, I want us to recog­nise that noth­ing we are fac­ing to­day is new. We have al­ready faced and over­come sim­i­lar tri­als and I be­lieve we can do it again.”

Among the tragedies for the year to date in­clude the death of Ni­Quan En­er­gy em­ploy­ee Al­lan­lane Ramkissoon.

Ramkissoon died on June 18 in Colom­bia where he was be­ing treat­ed at a burns unit, three days af­ter he was in­jured at Ni­Quan’s Pointe-a-Pierre plant.

The En­er­gy Min­istry has since set up a team to in­ves­ti­gate this fa­tal in­ci­dent.

Ear­li­er this year, Am­cham T&T added its voice to calls for the find­ings of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the fa­tal in­ci­dent at the Ni­Quan gas-to-liq­uids fa­cil­i­ty to be made pub­lic.

Ronald Adams, CEO of At­lantic, who al­so spoke to the Busi­ness Guardian, said it is al­ways a sad oc­ca­sion when any­one dies, es­pe­cial­ly at work.

“Peo­ple leave their homes and their fam­i­lies to go to work and their in­ten­tion is re­al­ly to re­turn home.

“I think as a coun­try which has been in the en­er­gy busi­ness, and re­al­ly just do­ing work in the in­dus­try for such a long time, there is al­ways room for im­prove­ment. I think our in­sti­tu­tions are do­ing a lot, as much as they can do, but there is al­ways room for im­prove­ment,” Adams re­it­er­at­ed.

He said the in­ten­tion of the con­fer­ence was to “keep the sen­si­tiv­i­ty and the in­ter­est” around health and safe­ty, se­cu­ri­ty and the en­vi­ron­ment to re­al­ly dri­ve every­one for im­prove­ment.

With At­lantic be­ing one of this coun­try’s key stake­hold­ers, he echoed sen­ti­ments of the im­por­tance of trans­paren­cy.

“We al­ways want to see that there is trans­paren­cy and com­mu­ni­ca­tion be­cause that is a key facet of how we learn ... I do think there is al­ways a dif­fi­cul­ty with com­mu­ni­ca­tion when folks are fo­cus­ing on re­cov­ery, ac­tiv­i­ties and so on. So the hope is we will have ze­ro in­ci­dents and ac­ci­dents and that’s re­al­ly where we need to fo­cus and that’s the in­ten­tion of the con­fer­ence.

“That’s why I am here. That’s what we do at At­lantic and I can speak for all the oth­er lead­ers across the in­dus­try, that that’s what we fo­cus on; bring­ing greater val­ue but al­so en­sur­ing that every­one re­turns home safe­ly to their fam­i­lies,” Adams added.

In look­ing at the con­fer­ence’s theme, he not­ed that the first was “Learn” which Adams said it is im­por­tant to ap­pre­ci­ate that learn­ing is not just about what is stud­ied in schools or uni­ver­si­ties.

“Learn­ing is about ob­serv­ing, learn­ing is about ac­tive lis­ten­ing, and learn­ing is about par­tic­i­pa­tion, be­cause the op­por­tu­ni­ties to learn are all around us if we are will­ing to pay at­ten­tion and en­gage.

“It is, there­fore, es­sen­tial to cre­ate an or­gan­i­sa­tion­al cul­ture that en­cour­ages learn­ing and de­vel­op­ment, and the need for this is no­table with­in the sphere of HSSE, where the risk from re­peat­ed mis­takes is par­tic­u­lar­ly acute,” he ad­vised.

The sec­ond pil­lar of the con­fer­ence’s theme is “Em­pow­er.”

Ac­cord­ing to Adams, em­pow­er­ment con­tin­ues to be an es­sen­tial el­e­ment in achiev­ing or­gan­i­sa­tion­al strat­e­gy, recog­nis­ing the im­por­tance of in­volv­ing em­ploy­ees in de­ci­sion-mak­ing, and en­cour­ag­ing them to take own­er­ship of both ac­tions and out­comes.

“Sus­tain” is the last theme of the con­fer­ence, which Adams not­ed has tak­en on new mean­ing and im­por­tance in to­day’s con­text, as all eyes are fo­cused on cli­mate change, and the threats and vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties that we wit­ness on an in­creas­ing ba­sis.

Adams al­so cit­ed that less than a month ago, T&T ex­pe­ri­enced some of the hottest tem­per­a­tures on record, and flood­ing has be­come rou­tine with even the small­est amount of rain­fall.

“Sus­tain there­fore, speaks to sus­tain­ing the very ex­is­tence of hu­man­i­ty as we know it, meet­ing the needs of our cur­rent gen­er­a­tions with­out com­pro­mis­ing the abil­i­ty of fu­ture gen­er­a­tions to meet their own needs, and, crit­i­cal to this is the glob­al en­er­gy tran­si­tion.

“At At­lantic, we play a crit­i­cal role in this tran­si­tion, and, as the clean­est fos­sil fu­el, nat­ur­al gas and LNG will re­main an im­por­tant source of en­er­gy as we move to­wards low-car­bon and po­ten­tial­ly ze­ro-car­bon sources,” Adams added.