Don’t let a checklist mentality be a shortcut to safety
Laws and regulations governing the refining and petrochemicals industries largely exist to protect people and the environment, said John Carroll, vice president of compliance services with the crisis and emergency management consultancy Witt O'Brien's, LLC. Although compliance does affect a downstream company's bottom line, Carroll warns that relegating compliance to "just making checkmarks on a checklist" can exact greater costs later on. The "checklist" mentality stems from a lack of leadership within an organization.
"Compliance, and conforming with compliance, is a value system that has to come from management on down," Carroll said. "A lot of times we'll see organizations get fined or have a series of safety mishaps and they'll hire a position to fix those (problems), but then those positions aren't supported by upper management so there's actually not anything done. For these things to be successful in the industry, they have to be supported by upper management."