Case Study
We are currently involved in three streams of activity with BP’s Global Operations Organisation.
All three streams are overseen by the Head of Global Operations and a sub-set of the VPs in his operation. The three streams are complementary and all support BP’s drive to eliminate the likelihood of serious incidents occurring on BP-operated facilities, from offshore production platforms to pipelines and onshore installations.
The first stream involves supporting the 15-20 regional operations leaders across the globe (BP operates in six continents) through planning and facilitating bi-annual forums at which these leaders come together to develop common strategies for implementing any new global policies, to review the performance of the past six months and to respond to any themes or learning from recent performance. The focus includes operating performance, but the primary driver of this forum is safety and, in particular, the prevention of potentially catastrophic events such as happened at Texas City refinery (2005) and on the Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico (2010).
The second stream involves running much larger annual conferences or meetings whereby BP’s site managers from the principal 50 or so sites around the globe meet with the top leadership to exchange learning, ideas and plans regarding safety. The format is similar in nature to the regional leaders’ forum but the outcomes are more specific and are tailored around specific site needs. Our role is to help design and plan both tiers of forum, to develop the agenda in consultation both with attendees and with top leadership, to facilitate the events and to inject elements of safety leadership education as required.
The final stream involves supporting the Head of Global Operations by facilitating two forums per year attended by the CEOs of BP’s 50 biggest suppliers, who run organisations with a combined headcount of over 1.5 million. We contribute to the design of these forums and we facilitate or moderate the events themselves, which are designed to exchange best practice and to develop common leadership strategies for managing critical risks which the companies face in common. This forum has been hugely successful in stimulating change and improving collaboration in relation to safety, particularly in areas such as culture, employee engagement and standardisation.
We are regularly used across BP to facilitate key workshops - for example over the last 5 years we have facilitated bi annual workshops with operations teams including Area Operating Mangers and Site Managers (185 people) and 5 technical functions (140 people) in Engineering Services, including Integrity Management and Projects and Modifications. The core aims were to accelerate team performance and develop leadership capability, particularly where team members interface with key stakeholders and business units.
The success of this forum is attested by the CEOs’ continued participation and enthusiasm and by the tangible actions and strategies taken away and implemented by the delegate companies.