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Tom Kunes Appointed to NIATx Board of Directors
Kestrel Principal Tom Kunes was recently invited to join the Board of Directors for NIATx. NIATx developed a process improvement model specifically for the substance abuse treatment field. At NIATx, process improvement is defined as a series of actions taken by a change team to identify, analyze and improve existing processes within an organization to meet new goals and objectives.
Tom brings over 40 years of experience consulting industrial clients in operational and business risk management, process improvement, and compliance assurance to his NIATx Board position. He has expertise in helping organizations improve existing systems and optimize them to reduce costs and risks and improve performance. His ability to link business processes, management systems, and daily practices has allowed many companies to more effectively manage business risks and liabilities and improve effectiveness.
NIATx was founded in 2003 and began by providing technical assistance to 39 organizations. As of 2010, the organization works with more than 2000 organizations across multiple initiatives in all 50 states. NIATx is part of the Center for Health Enhancement Systems Studies based at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The director of NIATx is Dr. David H. Gustafson, professor of industrial and systems engineering.
Join Kestrel in July: Food Safety Events
Join Kestrel’s food safety experts this July. We would enjoy the opportunity to meet up with you to discuss your food safety challenges. Here’s where you can find us:
International Association for Food Protection (IAFP) Annual Meeting
July 8-11, 2018
Salt Palace Convention Center – Salt Lake City, Utah
Get insights on current and emerging food safety issues, the latest science, innovative solutions to new and recurring problems, and the opportunity to network with thousands of food safety professionals. Plus…don’t miss Kestrel Senior Consultant Melody Ge as she presents, “Sanitation, Did We Do It Right?” on Monday, July 9.
Institute of Food Technologists Annual Meeting (IFT18)
July 15-18, 2018
McCormick Place – Chicago, Illinois
Join food professionals from around the globe and experience powerful presentations, panel discussions, and debates exploring important and timely topics in the science of food.
Webinar: The New SQF Fundamentals Program
July 24, 2018 at 12 p.m. ET
Learn more about SQF’s new Fundamentals Program for small to medium-sized businesses in this webinar. The program provides a step-by-step approach to improve food safety management and will help facilitate retailer acceptance of entrepreneurs and provide additional food safety security and acceptance along the supply chain. Kestrel Senior Consultant Melody Ge will be partnering with SQFI Compliance Manager Chris Sinclair to provide this training.
Kestrel is proud to provide our ongoing support for the manufacture, processing, and distribution of safe food. We look forward to seeing you this July!
Free Webinar: SQF Fundamentals Program
Food safety is a critical component of a successful supplier/buyer trading partnership. SQFI has created an approach for small- to medium-size food producers who don’t have a robust food safety program in place that satisfies buyers’ and retailers’ concerns—the new Fundamentals Program for Food Manufacturing and the Fundamentals Program for Primary Producers.
Kestrel Management Senior Consultant Melody Ge will be joining SQFI Compliance Manager Chris Sinclair to walk you through this SQF Fundamentals Program’s step-by-step approach to improve food safety management in a FREE webinar.
The New SQF Fundamentals Program:
Partnering the Global Markets Programme and the SQF Code
Tuesday, July 24, 2018
12:00 p.m. ET
Join us to discuss the new Fundamentals Program and how it can apply to your operation. We will discuss the requirements and provide best practices on how to get started on your certification journey.
- Learn about the new SQF Fundamentals Program for small- and medium-sized businesses
- Understand the requirements of the SQF Fundamentals Program
- Understand who should use the SQF Fundamentals Program and the benefits of the program
- Hear some of the obstacles and best practices on how to get started
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Join Kestrel at NACD Central: June 11-13, 2018
Are You Attending the NACD Central Region Meeting?
Kestrel is looking forward to seeing many of you in St. Louis—and to continuing our conversations about your business/compliance needs and how Kestrel is helping chemical distributors more effectively manage management system requirements (e.g., Responsible Distribution, ISO 9001) and ongoing EHS&S and Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) compliance obligations.
NACD Central Region Meeting
June 11-13, 2018
The Ritz-Carlton
St. Louis, Missouri
Connect with Kestrel
Jake Taylor (Kestrel’s Responsible Distribution Adviser) and Liz Hillgren will both be on-hand at the Central Region Meeting. Please reach out—introduce yourself, get to know Jake and Liz, share your compliance concerns, and learn more about how Kestrel is committed to serving NACD as a strategic partner. We look forward to seeing many of you soon in St. Louis!
Kestrel Tellevate News / Safety
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Join Kestrel: AFPM Safety Conference
It’s time to “Discover the Possible” at the AFPM National Occupational & Process Safety Conference. Beyond the program of interesting industry presentations and learning opportunities, Kestrel Management is looking forward to connecting with many of you in San Antonio.
AFPM National Occupational & Process Safety Conference
May 15-16, 2018
Grand Hyatt San Antonio
We welcome the opportunity to learn more about your needs and discuss how Kestrel helps our clients improve occupational and process safety performance; manage EHS and quality risks; and achieve regulatory compliance assurance. See you in San Antonio!
Kestrel Grows SQF & GFSI Food Safety Resources
Kestrel is pleased to be growing our resources to the food industry with the addition of Senior Consultant Melody Ge.
Melody brings a diverse background to the Kestrel team. She started her career in product development, including production and quality control of a vegan “chicken meat” product. She then transitioned to a Compliance Specialist at SQF Institute, where she established and developed the SQFI Compliance Program and maintained the integrity of the SQF certification; and developing the SQF Code.
Immediately prior to joining Kestrel, Melody served in a number of quality management and business development roles at Lidl, an international grocery chain. As the Deputy Quality Assurance Director, she oversaw suppliers, food safety control, and product quality monitoring and management to maintain quality and safety of product routine tasks.
At Kestrel, Melody will be serving as project manager for food safety-related projects. She will be supporting clients in developing and implementing GFSI schemes and supplier approval programs, and sharing her expertise in GFSI, FSMA, FSVP, HACCP, GMP, SQF, IFS, FSSC 22000, and ISO.
Melody holds a Master’s Degree in Food Science from the University of Maryland, College Park, and a Bachelor’s Degree in Food Science and Technology from Shanghai Ocean University, and is fluent in English, Mandarin/Cantonese Chinese, French, and German. She is a member of the Institute of Food Technology (IFT) and holds certificates in HACCP, Extrusion Processing and Technology and Commercialization, and Commercially Sterile Packaged Foods.
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Process Safety Competence Assurance
Organizations in the chemical manufacturing and energy industry face the daily challenge to safely manage the processing, storage, and transportation of hazardous materials. To enable this, a great deal of focus and effort is put into compliance, strong management systems, well-maintained equipment, and organizational capability.
A key component of organizational capability is the competence of employees. This is critical to an organization’s success—and very relevant to process safety. In fact, process safety competence is both a regulatory requirement and a business improvement driver. But what does competence mean when it comes to the management of process safety?
Defining Competence
Process safety competence is an area that is sometimes misunderstood as simply providing training to employees. However, it is much more. Organizations need to understand the definition of competence and ensure employees have the basic competence required to fulfill their job function successfully.
Competence is often defined as “an individual having the right level of training and experience to enable the successful execution of defined job responsibilities”. By this definition, competence is a step beyond basic job training—one that necessitates understanding and the ability to successfully apply what is learned.
To fulfill this intent, especially for those working on the management of process safety, it is critical that employers have a structured and sustainable approach to ensure process safety competence. This may include a clear process safety competence assurance program. Not only will this assist with regulatory compliance, it is a critical element in the prevention of a process safety incident.
Steps to Ensure Competence
To successfully create an organizational culture that values and emphasizes process safety competence assurance, there are some basic steps that need to be followed, including those outlined below:
- Understand and define positions within the organization that impact or influence process safety.
- Define desired competence levels and requirements for each of these positions.
- Develop an organizational competence matrix for process safety that documents the positions and requirements.
- Assess position holders’ (i.e., employees’) process safety competence against the requirements outlined on the organizational matrix.
- Identify gaps in competence for each individual and develop individual closure plans.
- Work with employees to address identified competency gaps and verify that they have been closed.
When filling a position that has process safety requirements, the identified candidate(s) should undergo an assessment against the defined process safety requirements for the position to ensure they are competent. It is important to ensure the new employee has the required competence before they are appointed or hired. Successful candidates may have some minor gaps that can quickly be rectified, but putting candidates into jobs that impact or influence process safety as “development” or a “learning opportunity” is a large risk to the organization and unfair to the individual. It is also a practice organizations should stop if they are truly committed to process safety.
Maintaining the Commitment to Competence
To further enhance the ongoing process safety competence of an organization, each position that impacts or influences process safety must maintain the required process safety competencies identified on the competence matrix. The commitment must be sustained to be successful; it should not be a one-time effort.
Organizations can do this by:
- Reviewing competence requirements and adjusting the matrix as new requirements are identified;
- Conducting regular assessments to verify employee competence; and
- Providing opportunities for training and experiential learning that ensure process safety competence remains a top priority.
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OSHA Releases Three New PSM Publications
OSHA has released three new guidance documents to help employers comply with the agency’s Process Safety Management (PSM) standard. PSM is critically important to facilities that store highly hazardous chemicals. Implementing the required safety programs helps prevent fires, explosions, large chemical spills, toxic gas releases, runaway chemical reactions, and other major incidents. The new documents focus on PSM compliance for Small Businesses, Storage Facilities and Explosives and Pyrotechnics Manufacturing.
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Improving Process Safety Leadership and Culture
Over the past 30 years, there have been numerous events both nationally and internationally that have led organizations to bring a more concerted focus to process safety. Such a focus has many such organizations building process safety elements into their management systems. The goal is to not only comply with regulations, such as OSHA 1910.119, but to also ensure sustainable programs that prevent process safety incidents from ever happening.
A large part of this effort involves integrating process safety leadership into existing programs. Improving an organization’s process safety leadership and culture can have significant and lasting impacts on a company’s process safety performance. Three steps that organizations can undertake to advance this effort include the following:
- Amending metrics to include more leading indicators that are designed to prevent process safety incidents
- Cultivating communications geared toward process safety
- Ensuring incentive schemes include measures related to process safety
Traditional Management Systems
Traditional management systems include personal safety, environmental management, and industrial hygiene as the core elements. Management systems, metrics, and communications have historically been focused on personal safety and environmental management. These areas have clear industry compliance drivers and easy-to-understand metrics for organizational leaders. The prevention of personal injury or actions to protect the environment are relatable concepts for most.
The addition of process safety to the management system structure has been a smooth transition for many organizations, as the majority of the elements that cover process safety are already part of a typical management system. However, process safety—and the incidents that can occur if not managed well—can be complex in nature to explain. The challenging part of integrating process safety into an organization becomes getting leaders both comfortable and equipped to address it.
Leading Metrics
Due to the generally low frequency of process safety incidents, the development and measurement of process safety indicators is often not a priority for organizations. Many companies rely heavily on lagging personal safety and environmental metrics (Days Away from Work Rate, Total Recordable Incident Rate, Spill Rate). Injuries are easy for leaders to understand and explain. Leaders demonstrate empathy towards their staff and contractors, again making it easier for them to relate to personal safety. Minor spills are also easily understood and easier to discuss.
While these lagging metrics are still important and can be used and communicated, organizations need to include different metrics to bring more focus on leading indicators that are designed to prevent process safety incidents. Some examples of leading metrics that can be developed, implemented, and tracked include the following:
- Identifying systems/equipment that are critical to prevent or mitigate a process safety event, and tracking their effectiveness and operability
- Tracking the completion of Management of Change (MOC)
- Tracking the effective closeout of Process Hazard Analysis (PHA) and PSM audit actions
- Assessing organizational capability around process safety and tracking identified gap closure plans
- Tracking the number of Pressure Relief Valve (PRV) activations
- Tracking anomalies from complete permit-to-work reviews
Communication
Once an organization has developed a set of leading process metrics applicable to the business, the metrics should be made visible to all staff and included in communications on business performance. Leaders also need to focus more of their strategic communications and site visits on process safety. This can include talking about leading process safety metrics and undertaking the following activities when at a facility:
- Ask members of the facility staff about the major identified hazards from the PHA
- Determine if staff are involved in reviewing and updating operating procedures
- Ask staff about the last emergency drill and actions taken
- Ask operations staff about the number of alarms they deal with on a typical shift to determine if alarm management/rationalization is required or if low criticality alarms are not burdening staff
- Hold discussion groups focused on process safety during leadership onsite visits
Incentive Schemes
Another outcome of tracking lagging metrics involves translating them into part of the organization’s incentive bonus criteria for leaders. Organizations should work to transition leadership bonus/incentive schemes away from just traditional personal safety and environmental lagging metrics, namely injury and spill rates. Again, it would not be necessary to immediately drop existing lagging metrics. Start with adding the new metrics and gradually change the percentage weightings so leading process safety indicators become the dominant factor. This will serve to reinforce the importance of process safety and incident prevention in overall business performance.
To truly have an organization that demonstrates process safety leadership and has a strong process safety culture, there need to be some changes and effective actions taken. The steps outlined in this article—amending metrics, cultivating communications toward process safety, and integrating process safety into incentive schemes—can help organizations take a few of the initial necessary steps to build process safety culture and leadership and, ultimately, prevent process safety incidents from occurring.
Kestrel Grows Senior Food Safety Resources
Kestrel is pleased to be growing our resources to the food industry with the addition of Senior Consultant Roberto Bellavia.
Roberto comes to Kestrel following a successful career with US Foods, where he provided leadership for quality and food safety programs; managed and developed HACCP, GMP, SSOP, and SOP programs; and planned and implemented GFSI certification for FSSC 22000 at 13 national locations.
At Kestrel, Roberto will be serving as project manager for food safety-related projects and supporting clients in developing and implementing GFSI schemes and supplier approval programs. He will focus on meat, dairy, RTE, bakery, and other related food industry segments.
Roberto holds a number of food qualifications that will enhance Kestrel’s ability to serve the food industry, including GFSI, HACCP, GMP, SSOP, SOP, FSPCA, Lead Auditor certifications. He has nearly 20 years of food quality experience and a Master’s Degree in Animal Production Science from the University of Camerino in Italy.