Managing the safety trail

It was through the integration with Swedish gas company AGA in 2001 that Synergi® was introduced to what then emerged as the Linde Gas and Engineering Division. The key person in this was Norwegian AGA’s Safety Manager Einar Smestad, who had been involved with the SHEQ system in AGA since the start.

The Linde Group works hard to make people safety conscious. The merger provided the opportunity to consolidate the various systems used around the world. Several other SHEQ systems were evaluated before Synergi® was acquired.

”We could have developed our inhouse system. But considering all the features we needed - multilinguality, all the categories and technicalities – we realised it would be hard to do it by ourselves. It has been much better to just contribute to Synergi Solutions’ development of a tool for us. Synergi® is very flexible and we are assured that it will continue to be further developed in the future,” says Mike Furmston, IT Business Process Manager in the Linde Group.

Andrew Owen stresses the importance of making their SHEQ system as useable as possible globally – something in which Synergi Solutions have gained considerable experience over the years while cooperating with global players. Different languages and cultures need to be given careful attention as well, he says.

”Even within the English language there are differences. A lorry in the UK is a truck in the US. In addition one has to take into account that the system will be used by many different people working in many different roles, for example a cylinder filler in Bangladesh and the plant operator in the US.”

The Linde Group employs 50,000 people in 100 countries world wide in a wide variety of different situations. Their vehicles travel a billion kilometres a year to deliver products and services – it is very important that individuals identify risks on a daily basis. So far Synergi® has been spread to the plants and offices in Northern Europe where 1,500 out of 2,000 people in all divisions have been using the system for five years.

”There is a lot of enthusiasm in the Linde Group about Synergi^®,” says Andrew Owen. ”And this is crucial for success when you bring in a new system. You have to get everyone to feel that they have their say to get the feeling of owner- ship to the SHEQ processes and the IT system they have to use. This of course slows things down, but it is vital to avoid an attitude where people are thinking ”This is just another HQ initiative that we don’t want.”

Within Northern Europe Synergi® was initially used for incident management. After a while it was also put into use for auditing and improvement proposals; it was developed into a strategic tool for the whole management system. All managers were sent on a two day training session on the incident management level. Then they stopped the training for a while to get the users more competent.

”Learning to handle the tool in itself is not hard. But implementing Synergi® is not a quick fix. The important – but harder part – will be to get the management to use the data Synergi® produces in a comprehensive way. They might have to change their way of thinking management of SHEQ,” Owen says.

The Linde Group’s curve of serious injury is fluctuating but the incidents are going down. Synergi® still needs to be introduced globally and the work to create a strong safety conscious culture carries on, Owen reassures.

”This is a journey that takes time. It is a little like rolling a stone up a hillside. It is very hard to start with and you need to give it constant attention but once it is moving it becomes easier.”

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