This article originally appeared in Issue 41 of The Oilworker.
The Philadelphia Project for Occupational Safety and Health (PhilaPOSH) honored Local 10-234 USW Triangle of Prevention (TOP) Representative Dawn Andreoli with a Leadership in Health and Safety Award at its 33rd Annual Awards Reception last November.
Local 10-234 nominated Andreoli for her ongoing commitment to health and safety. Besides being a safety representative for the local, she initiated the TOP program at Monroe Refinery after Delta Airlines bought the former Phillips 66 site in Trainer, Pa.
Monroe Energy and the local signed a contract with TMC to do the TOP program in September 2016. The local’s executive board appointed her to be the TOP representative
“Although I am honored to receive this award, it really is due to the support of the union, the workers, the company and the USW Tony Mazzocchi Center (TMC),” Andreoli said.
From Zero to 60
“We’ve taken the TOP program from zero to 60 in a very short time,” she said. “We’ve been able to get cooperation from managers who weren’t confident in the program.”
“We went from investigating low-level incidents, such as simple motor vehicle accidents, to doing significant investigations with management, such as a Ferric Chloride spill. Management is telling us, ‘You guys are doing well investigating incidents, so we want to get you more involved,” she added.
Andreoli said that employees actively provide information on near misses, and she collects the data and posts it to a spreadsheet. This enables her to see trends and direct management’s focus to needed fixes.
“Dawn is the only person in the refinery who can do the tracking,” said Local 10-234 Alternate TOP Representative Matt Birney. “She documents every near miss and incident throughout the refinery and breaks it down in a category.”
Although the company conducts a multitude of audits, it is unable to track data like we can, Andreoli added.
A series of incidents last fall exemplified this ability.
“People were reporting things wrong with steps, ladders, platforms and stairs; we categorized them and put them on a spreadsheet. We were able to track a trend with that information and present it in a way that made sense. It was exciting for us to see our hard work come to fruition!” Andreoli said.
“You can say something to someone 100 times, but when you show it on paper, it means something,” she added.