If you have planned for a plant shutdown or turnaround, or are currently managing one, then you have encountered the associated risk and safety hazards. All good employers make safety the top priority while the turnaround will also be evaluated based upon quality, schedule and budget.
How do you effectively drive high quality work on schedule and within budget without compromising safety?
Build and maintain a safety culture with accountability.
There are a lot of moving parts to your turnarounds with multiple contractors and subcontractors. All these moving parts can threaten the integrity of your safety culture without a solid framework to keep everyone accountable to the safety mission.
The blocking and tackling required to execute the quality of work, adherence to schedule and budget can begin to push against the zero tolerance nature of effective safety compliance. While we know recognizing and preventing hazards is key to a safe workplace, as long as humans continue to work, there will be accidents. Minimizing the risk of incident given that humans are working amongst changing hazards is key.
How do you minimize the risk of a safety incident on your job?
- • Recognize the hazard
- • Communicate
- • Act to mitigate the threat
If you can improve the turnaround team’s performance on these three points, you will minimize the risk of having an accident on your job.
How do you improve the turnaround team’s performance on these three points?
- • Assure there are experienced Safety Specialists and Techs working your turnaround
- • Keep the experienced Safety Specialists and Techs out of the line of production management reporting
By having experienced Safety Specialists, Techs and other safety roles out of the production reporting chain of command, you maximize the total team accountability to the safety culture and zero tolerance mandate.
Having Experienced Safety Staff means people whose primary role is Safety and who is fully competent in recognizing hazards, communicating effectively and knows how to act to support mitigation of a threatening situation.
Just as you need your welders to be highly competent specialists who answer to the quality of their welds, so you also need Safety Staff from top to bottom who are highly competent and are not unduly influenced by any competing priorities such as schedule or budget.
It may seem of little consequence to many Turnaround Managers or Planners how the Safety staff is sourced for their project, but the impact of Safety Staff sourcing can be quite significant. There is wisdom in helping your turnaround employees and contractors succeed by having Safety Staff as a stand alone team; out of the line of production supervision. Minimize the risk associated with having the “fox watching the hen house.”
What is a major step forward toward overcoming safety challenges during a turnaround?
Include an experienced Safety Staffing Contractor on your turnaround for all safety related positions where roles are not already filled by the owners’ safety staff.
We help staff for turnarounds so have to identify these challenges and make it a priority to plan and communicate well so that things go smoothly.
If you are need of temporary labor or safety professionals during a turnaround, give us a call. Even if you have run into an obstacle toward the end of a turnaround, we may be able to provide qualified staff to handle the job. To learn more about the positions we staff and our process, please see here: https://responsablestaffing.com/safety-staffing/
FAQs
Industrial turnarounds involve multiple contractors and subcontractors working simultaneously, creating constantly changing hazard conditions. The pressure to meet schedule and budget goals can erode a safety culture if there is no solid accountability framework in place. Managing these competing priorities without compromising zero-tolerance safety compliance is the core challenge every turnaround manager faces.
Maintaining safety culture across a multi-contractor turnaround requires a clear accountability framework, experienced safety professionals in dedicated roles, and keeping safety staff completely separate from the production management reporting chain. When safety personnel answer only to the safety mission — not to production supervisors — the entire team stays accountable to the zero-tolerance mandate.
The three essential steps are: (1) Recognize the hazard, (2) Communicate the threat, and (3) Act to mitigate it. Improving your turnaround team’s performance on all three points is the most direct path to reducing workplace accidents, even in dynamic environments where hazards are constantly changing.
When safety specialists report to production supervisors, their judgment can be influenced — consciously or not — by schedule and budget pressures. Keeping safety staff in a standalone team removes that conflict of interest, maximizes their independence, and ensures hazard recognition and communication happen without competing priorities getting in the way. As the saying goes, it minimizes the risk of the “fox watching the hen house.”
A qualified turnaround safety specialist should be fully competent in hazard recognition, clear and effective communication, and mitigation response. Their primary role must be safety — not production support. Just as you need certified welders who answer to the quality of their welds, you need safety staff at every level who are highly skilled and undistracted by other project demands.
The source and structure of your safety staffing has a significant impact on turnaround performance. Safety staff that is independently sourced through a dedicated safety staffing contractor — rather than pulled from within the production team — are more likely to maintain objectivity, enforce safety protocols consistently, and act as a true check on workplace hazards rather than a checkbox function
A safety staffing contractor should be engaged during the planning phase of your turnaround, well before work begins, to ensure all safety positions not already covered by the owner’s safety staff are properly filled with experienced professionals. That said, even if you’re mid-turnaround and have encountered gaps, a qualified safety staffing firm may still be able to provide personnel quickly to cover critical roles.
A safety staffing contractor typically fills roles such as Safety Specialists, Safety Technicians, and other dedicated safety personnel needed for the duration of a turnaround. These are temporary but highly skilled placements designed to supplement — not replace — the owner’s permanent safety team and to ensure full coverage across all active work areas.
Experienced safety professionals are trained to spot hazards that less specialized workers often overlook, communicate risks clearly to the broader team, and guide immediate mitigation action. Because accidents can occur even in well-managed environments, having seasoned safety staff embedded on your site — focused solely on safety — measurably lowers the likelihood and severity of incidents.
The single most impactful step is to engage an experienced, dedicated safety staffing contractor to fill all safety-related roles not already covered by the owner’s safety team. This ensures every safety position is held by someone whose sole priority is safety — not production metrics — and provides the independent oversight that keeps the entire turnaround team accountable to a strong safety culture.