Construction Site Safety Standardisation
Authors: Akintola A. , Barlow J. , Cooke E. , Fynn W. , Hansen H. , Heim M. , Jackson R. , Mennes S. , Pendrey D. , Perkins B. , Popat N. , Thomas J. 
Published: March 2016

As part of the Royal Dutch Shell Group, the Shell Projects organisation, which is responsible for all major construction projects in Shell, shares the Shell-wide Goal Zero aspiration of no harm and no leaks. To help accelerate the journey to Goal Zero, a set of standard safety rules and a roadmap of activities that can help to deliver strong safety leadership have been implemented across all construction sites and installation vessels. This paper will describe the development of this initiative, which is known as Construction Site Safety Standardisation (CSSS), outline its key components and their purpose, and demonstrate how CSSS is impacting the global projects construction sites that are essential to the continued growth of Shell as an energy provider and petrochemical company.

CSSS grew out of an analysis of how workers were getting hurt, mainly based on Shell's own data, but also using some wider industry information. A hot spot analysis was made of incident types, including near misses with serious injury potential. The following activities were identified as the most hazardous: Confined SpacesExcavationsHeavy Equipment and Vehicle OperationsHot WorksLifting and HoistingSafe Isolation of EnergyScaffolding and other forms of accessSimultaneous OperationsWorking at Height

Requirements that were specific to construction/installation activities were then developed to reinforce and complement already existing cross-Shell HSSE requirements. Standards were also developed for the following safe practices that were regarded as further construction-wide contributory factors in safety performance: ▪Barricades and Open Holes▪Housekeeping▪Line of Fire▪Personal Protective Equipment▪Routine Life Tasks

The new, extended requirements, supported by visual materials and toolbox talks, are designed to promote safer work among both employees and contractor staff as well as cross-pollinate lessons learned and best practices across the global projects portfolio.

The requirement to use a ‘roadmap’ of enabling activities, supported by a structured set of consistent materials and job aids, reduces waste and streamlines approaches to building worksite safety cultures. This, in turn, improves experience transfer and learning and avoids the potential of continual reinvention of initiatives across projects. Roadmap activities are clustered into five areas: Safety Leadership; Care for People; Staffing, Training, Competency; Communications; and Worksite Set-up.

CSSS was initially back-integrated into existing projects and is now an integral part of the start-up of new projects. Consistent uptake across projects is helping to establish a single, global approach to construction site safety management. This paper will include some project examples to show how CSSS is helping to drive positive change and promote consistency in different environments - including greenfield and brownfield sites and vessels - and across projects with varying governance models.