At Grace, the safety and health of our employees are among our most critical concerns. Our main goal is to have everyone work, think, and be safe. We believe that safety is more than a priority; it must come first in everything we do and every decision we make. This is what it means to Lead with Safety.
Grace has an overarching goal of No One Hurt, which we interpret as zero OSHA recordable injuries. To get there, Grace benchmarks its performance against our peer companies. Grace has a near-term target to achieve top quartile safety performance among our chemical industry peers for Total Recordable Incident Rate (TRIR), Tier 1, Tier 2, and combined Tier 1&2 Process Safety Events. Individual plant managers have a goal of zero OSHA recordables and zero Tier 1 Process Safety Events.
Through our commitment to a safe and healthful workplace, as laid out in our EHS policy and formalized through our company-wide EHS management system, we consistently achieve injury rates well below average for the chemical industry.
Lead with Safety Philosophy:
- All Grace employees, contractors, and suppliers make a personal commitment to working safely.
- We take ownership of our actions to drive our culture of safety, ethics, and core values.
- We speak up when we observe unsafe behaviors or conditions.
- We are all responsible for recognizing risks and doing something about them.
- Crucial conversations lead to safe workplaces.
- Safety is not an action but a mindset.
Management-Worker Health and Safety Committees
Grace's global EHS Management System enables procedures and practices that establish formal worker-management health and safety committees at our plants. Many operate as Responsible Care® steering committees and are empowered to make decisions and investments in workplace health and safety. Committees also support Grace's "EHS-ID" initiatives—intensive programs that develop, track, and ensure execution of actions or work orders to eliminate EHS-related risks at the site. Many committees lead long-standing, site-specific programs that maintain the focus on leading indicator analysis, near-miss and incident reporting, and other safety priorities. Committee actions are part of site-based safety and compliance audits.
Injury and Rates, Lost Days, and Work-Related Fatalities
|
2019 |
2020 |
2021 |
2022 |
Recordable Rate* |
0.74 |
0.62 |
0.62 |
0.62 |
Lost Time Incident Rate** |
0.30 |
0.30 |
0.28 |
0.30 |
Work-related Fatalities*** |
0 |
0 |
1 |
0 |
*Recordable rate for all employees calculated (Number of Recordables * 200,000) / Hours Worked |
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**Lost Time Incident Rate for all employees and contractors (Number of Lost Time Injuries * 200,000) / Hours Worked |
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***Number of Fatalities for employees and contractors |
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Process Safety Performance
Our commitment to providing a safe and healthful workplace extends to our Process Safety program, which manages hazards and mitigates risks associated with our manufacturing operations. Our risk-based Process Safety program aims to safeguard the well-being of our employees and the communities in which we live and work, and responsibly meet our obligations to all our stakeholders. Nearly half of our facilities are regulated under a local or national process safety regulation.
The key metric for assessing Process Safety performance is the number and rate of Process Safety Events as defined by the American Petroleum Institute Recommended Practice 754, which has been adopted by the American Chemistry Council's Responsible Care program. This metric is aligned with our goal of "Nothing Out of Place," and evaluates unplanned or uncontrolled chemical releases against pre-defined criteria based on material properties, quantity, and resulting impacts. Grace has defined additional process safety metrics which measure the health of our protective barriers and other process safety-related impacts across all our facilities.
Because the prevention of unplanned releases is critical to both the Process Safety and Environmental programs, the implementation of this metric provides synergies across multiple disciplines and is fully integrated into our EHS Management System. Grace has a global corporate goal of zero Tier One process safety events, and achievement of this global goal, along with plant-specific goals for internally defined process safety events are KPIs tied to pay and performance evaluations within the Grace Global Operations organization.
Our commitment to continuous improvement in process safety management is evidenced by our active membership in the Center for Chemical Process Safety (CCPS), and participation in the American Chemistry Council and the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers Advancing Process Safety programs. Internally, the Grace Process Safety Network is our global community for sharing best practices, enhancing our program and capabilities, and continuously improving process safety performance across the enterprise.