As part of its march towards HSE Excellence, ADMA-OPCO is constantly looking for ways to challenge what is traditional or conventional and put forth innovative ways of doing things to achieve its objective of continuous improvement.

With a strong conviction of "what is good can be better", ADMA-OPCO embarked on wide ranging efforts to find weakness in our systems with the ultimate aim to identify gaps and proposed methods to mitigate, if not eliminate faults and weak links.

Operating in this part of the world where heat is an unavoidable occurrence during the most part of the year, HEAT STRESS became one of the most important subjects to be tackled.

By closely examining historical occupational health data, disturbing trends had been uncovered wherein the effectiveness of yearly heat stress campaigns comes into question.

The Problems:

During the numerous brain-storming sessions, site visits, site inspection tours, as well as hundreds of personal interviews of the various levels of the workforce, the following facts became evident:

  • 80% of ADMA OPCO jobs are performed by contractors, yet most workers have little understanding of how heat affects their body.

  • There are several HEAT STRESS mitigation methods in place but they are fragmented and disorganized. Therefore, ineffective.

  • Different sites have different methods of and procedures. Some sites’ heat stress campaign method is to simply stick a few posters and leave the interpretation to the workers.

  • There are several guidelines but none is not role-specific, which, could lead to ambiguity or misinterpretation of responsibilities.

  • Training is left to the contractors with no established method of monitoring the effectiveness of the training.

You can access this article if you purchase or spend a download.