Building a safety culture across an entire organization
JGC transformed safety to achieve breakthroughs in performance on multiple major capital projects
Best-in-class
Saved in drilling costs and lost-time incidents
Challenge
Headquartered in Kanagawa, Japan, JGC is one of the world’s top engineering contractors. Drawing on its broad range of engineering technology and project management capabilities, the company has provided EPC (engineering, procurement and construction) services to some 20,000 projects in more than 70 countries around the world. Having experienced JMJ’s Incident and Injury-Free™ (IIF™) approach on the Shell Pearl GTL project, JGC’s management recognized its potential. They made the decision to implement the approach on more than ten overseas projects including the Integrated Gas Development (IGD) project in Abu Dhabi and the Donggi-Senoro LNG project in Indonesia.
JGC faced two major challenges on its journey to organization-wide safety transformation:
- A multinational workforce (about 50 different nationalities) employed on international projects, some with a workforce of over 30,000, with language and cultural challenges
- Short duration of projects and the turnover/rotation of the project workforce. Personnel usually mobilized on a project for one to three years. Significant culture change is a long-term process
Solution
To develop and maintain a robust and successful IIF safety culture throughout all JGC major capital projects, and subsequently local projects, the following activities/initiatives took place:
- Coaching for subcontractors’ employees focusing on front-line supervision imparting their skills and knowledge with open communication
- Shared learning, with new managers visiting projects where IIF had been successfully implemented
- Conducted IIF culture health checks at three stages (start, peak and commissioning/start-up)
- Created tailored IIF initiatives at each project, taking the unique cultural elements into consideration
- Built an IIF community, with corporate head office promoting the sharing of IIF safety initiatives and learning from other projects
JGC’s five-year HSE vision was ‘to be the top in HSE’ by:
- Transforming the organization from the top down
- Establishing permanent safety core values across the organization
- Creating a safe, secure and healthy workplace in which all employees and contractors carry out their jobs with confidence, care and respect
Corporate transformation was not a target; it was a journey. It still requires the continuous involvement of each individual employee … to reach and sustain the required level of performance.
The IIF safety approach significantly contributes to the development of a safety culture on projects where a huge number of workers are exposed to the risks of the construction industry.
Results
IIF safety was also implemented across local projects under the name ‘li-Furei’, meaning ‘close relationship,’ with significant improvements in the safety culture. Various culture changing and social initiatives and activities have been initiated in JGC’s World Operations Center and subsidiary regional offices and JGC is actively expanding safety measures to prevent traffic accidents at overseas offices and bases.
Award-winning project
JGC received the Exxon Mobil President’s Safety Award
LTIR and TRIR improvements
Impact felt on all MCPs and local projects
Transformed organizational safety culture
Influenced employees and stakeholders