This special edition of Steel Talks focuses on ArcelorMittal’s most important commitment: safety. We are now one year into a three‑year journey toward world‑class safety performance, and today’s discussion looks at the progress made so far and the priorities that will drive the next steps.
Joining the conversation are three leaders central to this effort: Brad Davey, Executive Vice President responsible for safety; Pinakin Chaubal, Chief Technology Officer with responsibility for Process Safety Management; and Robin Paulmier, Head of Corporate Health and Safety.
We reflect on what has been achieved since the extensive safety audit by dss+ that concluded just over a year ago, the actions that are already making a difference, and the work ahead as we continue to strive towards a zero‑fatality, zero‑serious‑injury future.
Brad, Pinakin, Robin, welcome to the podcast. I'd like to start with you, Brad, with an opening question about this critical topic of safety. We're just over a year on from the publication of the DSS+ audit. Before we talk about progress, could you remind us of what this audit was and what the recommendations were that came from it?
(Brad Davey)
The rationale for this audit was to accelerate our progress to become a zero fatality and zero serious injury company. It was the most extensive audit we've ever undertaken. It was nine months in duration. 155 sites were audited. There were process safety management audits on the fourteen highest risk assets we have in our group, and we examined all health and safety management practises across the entire group as well.
Now, the conclusions from it, were that our strategy, which is fundamentally based on two pillars of risk management and culture, is the right one. We have excellent standards, policies and procedures. There are some improvements we will make to them, but they're very strong to begin with.
Our biggest issues are that we lack consistency in application and performance across our group and we need additional focus on contractor safety. So, I think that led to some very logical conclusions, which was to improve the identification and understanding of operational risk that we're exposed to. We needed to strengthen our existing health and safety assurance model so that we could have more even performance across the group.
We need to continue to embed safety values, mindsets and behaviours to achieve the one safety culture that we're after. We need to improve our contractor safety management standards and adopt industry best practises. And I say industry, much of this learning will come from petrochemical industries who really are at the forefront of process safety management. Then we'll integrate all of these elements also into supporting business processes.
And there's some terms in there I'd really like to come back to, particularly that idea of process safety management. But just before we do. Turning to you, Robin, one year on what has happened.
(Robin Paulmier)
So, the first year has focused on setting the foundations for the sustainable improvement. It started with, very strong engagement across the organisation driven by leadership right from the very top.
We also developed, our roadmaps, which are our action plans for three years. We have, more than 130 roadmaps across the group which are very well structured according to a common template. They gather more than 2400 actions.
We, started to set a framework for all process safety management with pilot plants, but also with bow ties and minimum mandatory barriers across the group. We have reinforced our collaboration with contractors, better embedding contractors into our processes. Leadership training, we also improved, starting from the very top with a big coaching, programme for our top 84 VPs and CEOs.
Brad, even at the top line that sounds incredibly comprehensive. Let's dig a bit into the details, starting with assurance. You've made changes to your assurance model, again following the recommendations of the audit. Could you explain what you've done, how it's working and what benefits are as well?
(Brad Davey)
It's been quite an extensive improvement that we've done to our assurance model across the group. We need to make sure that each region is measuring and expecting to the same standards. And then we haven't just made it like an audit. We built in coaching into the process of assurance so that we can help people get to the same performance level.
The first line of assurance is leadership within the unit. The second line of assurance is at a segment or region level. In some regions they're too small to have region leadership to do it. So, in those regions we have the corporate health and safety group to specifically provide the second line of assurance. Then we have a third line of assurance which is our internal audit group. They are really good at protocols and methods for doing audits and assurance.
So, from a governance perspective this is best in class governance. We've given coaching and it has led to improved results across the group.
And Pinakin, I'd like to bring you in here on the specific recommendation to adopt industry best practice for process safety management. Could you explain to us, to me what process safety management is, what you're doing to address it and to mitigate process safety related risk.
(Pinakin Chaubal)
Process safety management, is a little bit new for the steel industry. It's a very well-established methodology, in the oil and gas and at the heart of it, at the core of it is avoiding unplanned large-scale release of energy. So, when we take it into the steel industry, we are talking of unplanned release of solids, gases, liquids, molten slags and metal and of course energy.
We wanted to expand a little bit more on the concept of process safety management. We wanted to include asset integrity and we also wanted to address construction and certain aspects of project management.
In all these areas you need three things to come together. You need engineering expertise, you need operational knowledge, and you need safety leadership. In the case of operations, we have, been working on assessment of gap, what we call gaps in our operation. We have also engaged external consultants to bring in a very systematic, dedicated process of, rolling out or developing the PSM concept. So, for process, there are three areas.
First, we identify the top risk scenarios. Then we immediately talk about minimum barriers that have to be implemented. And then moving forward, we need to ensure that these barriers are maintained, that integrity is maintained. In the case of projects, we have defined two areas. One is that in design we need to ensure that certain basic design concepts are included. And then second, for construction we need to make sure that we have very clear guidelines and methodologies in place to ensure that construction safety is managed.
So, you can see that in both the areas that I've talked about, the expert knowledge is a very critical aspect of ensuring that we have a proper PSM methodology in place. We have, launched several pilots to get this process started.
We have twelve pilots on the process side, and we have four on the project side.
Robin, returning to you and staying on risk. What about operational risk? That was another core recommendation. What's happening there and how do you manage the situation with contractors? How do you ensure that they adhere to the same standards?
(Robin Paulmier)
First of all, we are revising our fatality prevention standard to make them even clearer. We're not much changing the requirements that we have, because we think that they are at the right level, but we are making sure that they are very clear and very well understood everywhere. We have introduced a concept which is called critical controls, which is typically kind of go, no go condition.
So, our technical fatality prevention standard lists a series of controls that should be there. And among those controls, some are critical, some are called critical. These are the one which are really having a big impact on the risk and the control of the risk.
And those ones are typically gone, no go criteria, same as the life saving golden rules. For example, if a life saving golden rule cannot be respected, we must stop the work and find a solution before resuming. It's the same for a critical control. If a critical control is not in place, we should stop the work.
It's a go, no go criteria. We also put a lot of emphasis on reaching full compliance to our, technical fatality prevention standard. We also put emphasis on contractor management. So here it's basically making sure that we make no difference between in terms of requirements and demand, between our own employee and our contractor.
Brad, if I can come to you, moving away from risk management to the other pillar of your safety strategy, which is culture. The audit recommendations talked about the importance of creating one safety culture. What does that mean? How do you go about creating it? What progress have you made over the past year?
(Brad Davey)
Thanks, Tom. It's a great question and I'm sure that you and all the listeners can imagine the footprint, the size of ArcelorMittal's with us covering every region in the globe.
We have a lot of natural, natural cultures and they're different. They're all different. So, trying to create one consistent culture around safety is a challenge. So, first thing we do is try and help everyone understand what it means, what this culture means that we're trying to create.
And we start with the Bradley Curve. It's a well published curve. It describes the different stages of culture. There's four stages in it, but we try and help everyone understand that stage three is the minimum we need to get to in the short term, which is everyone embraces all of our standards and our rules and wants to apply them in all the work that they do.
And then we're trying to push the whole organisation into the interdependent culture. That's the one safety culture we're really after. So how do you change culture? The importance is with leadership, and we've spent a lot of time explaining to all of our leaders how important it is and what they need to do to drive change and set the standards.
We've now created a new and enhanced model for competencies for all leaders and we're in the midst of assessing them all and helping them understand exactly what we expect.
Pinakin, you mentioned some pilots of PSM across the organisation. Can you talk a bit to those pilots, what you're doing and what you've learned from them?
(Pinakin Chaubal)
So, we looked at our entire flow sheet from mining through steel production and we identified twelve areas, what we call unit operations or action areas, where the risk of PSM events is the highest.
The focus of the pilots is to train and show and mentor in the detailed methodology of process safety management. At the same time, others from the segments and others from the same plant are also involved so that they can take this learning and then start to roll it out to other unit operations in the same plant and to other plants. What we are learning, from our pilots is that even in some of our well performing plants we have seen that there are gaps.
What is very good that I've seen is that many of these plants are immediately taking the action steps to address to close these gaps and then move forward in instituting the full range of the PSM practises.
Returning to you, Brad, what we've talked about here is a truly huge change management exercise. Huge in terms of scale and scope and in terms of the number of people involved from the shop floor to the board. How do you manage that? How do you make sure everyone's singing from the same hymn sheet, adhering to the same standards, moving in the same direction? How do you maintain oversight across that breadth?
(Brad Davey)
First thing, everyone needs to understand is that in change management it's always bigger than you think, and it takes time.
So, we started with unique and specific roadmaps for each region. So even though I say we're moving to one safety culture and one set of standards, the performance was uneven, therefore the gaps are uneven. And so, every region had, to take these recommendations and map them to their specific situation.
Now, key to any change management is, engagement and alignment and it starts with massive amounts of communication and again, it's always multiple times more than you believe because to really embed this, people need to understand it many different ways.
But we have done that, and we have safety first and foremost in everything we do. Our business planning reviews, we have extensive safety talks. There is no topic that is covered as extensively as safety. We still have to do lots of training together with this to make sure that we have the right safety skills.
Without the skills, the culture can't be there either. So even though I said these are two pillars about risk management and culture, they're highly integrated.
My final question is to all of you, but I'll start with you, Pinakin. In terms of the progress to date, what are you most pleased about and what area do you feel needs more focus?
(Pinakin Chaubal)
What I am very pleased with is that there is a very strong realisation that process safety is in fact a very critical aspect of our, not only our safety Journey to Zero philosophy but also, it's very closely tied into our aim to be a reliable operation globally.
What we need to do moving forward I think is two things. First of all, that even the sites which are not the pilot sites today should start training their workforce and should start implementing some of the, what we call the minimum barriers that have been identified.
At the same time, we also need to significantly increase our focus from our top leadership, and this has also been put in place following the convention that we have in Madrid last year.
To you Robin.
(Robin Paulmier)
I think the most significant progress so far is visible on the leadership, impact on the culture.
I think it's becoming really clear to everybody that the commitment is very strong, the energy is the highest than ever before and this can be measured through for example the Speak Up survey.
You know, we are performing some large-scale survey every six months in the group on a wide variety of topics of which health and safety and the KPIs indicators on health and safety question clearly show strong and steady progress on perceptions, the way safety is perceived within the organisation and the effort put on safety is perceived.
We have a series of KPIs lagging or leading that are clearly indicating that we are making progress.
Finally, to you Brad, to finish up.
(Brad Davey)
So, I am going to reinforce really some of the comments that both Pinakin and Robin made. You know the first point that I'm most satisfied with and see is the engagement and I'm talking engagement from the executive office to the shop floor. So, we're very encouraged that everyone is seeing the change, everyone is engaged in the change, and they see that senior leaders all want to get to zero in terms of serious accidents at ArcelorMittal.
So, we've been intensively working on this for, you know 15 months, I'll say, since the since the audit.
So again, very encouraging initial results from all the work. So, we see the feedback from the people, we see the feedback in the key numbers we're trying to drive. And so, you know, I'm just impressed with all of this, and I do see this focus each and every day.
It's all moving in the right direction. We have a lot of work to do again this year. But all of the initial results are very promising, Tom.
A truly colossal undertaking. Congratulations to all of you on the progress so far. Thanks for joining me on the podcast.