Safety Today for
a Healthy Tomorrow
Ensuring that everyone goes home safely every day requires ownership from every individual working at a Chesapeake location, and a commitment to continuous improvement. Through our HSER management system, we identify potential health and safety risks our employees may encounter and mitigate them through planning, prevention and processes.
Job Safety Analysis
Chesapeake routinely performs a job safety analysis (JSA) to document potential hazards associated with a given project. If a safety hazard is identified, we require a mitigation plan. JSA documents are maintained daily on location with the most current conditions and operational plan. Employees and company representatives must review the JSA before beginning a job, in addition to attending a safety meeting.
Industrial Hygiene
Through our industrial hygiene initiative, we conduct exposure assessments to identify chemical, physical and biological stressors that may impact employee health while on a job site. These evaluations, which align with Occupational Safety and Health Administration standards, have helped us identify the following potential stressors at certain sites:
- Respirable crystalline silica
- Respirable dust
- Total hydrocarbons
- Noise
- Diesel particulate matter
- Inorganic acids
- Hydrogen sulfide
After identifying exposure hazards, we develop situational plans and trainings to best protect our employees.
We also consider new processes and technology to further increase employee safety. For example, we evaluated the impact of a patented temporary hatch plug — hazardous atmosphere reduction plug (HARP) — to reduce potential exposures to total volatile organic compounds (VOC). Using this plug was found to reduce VOC exposure by up to 94% and earned Chesapeake a Best Health, Safety, Environment/Sustainable Development Onshore Award at the 2020 World Oil Awards. We’ve implemented this solution throughout our oil assets where these exposures are most likely to occur and are sharing our key learnings with industry peers.
Lone Worker Safety
Every day, some Chesapeake employees spend their shifts working at multiple sites by themselves. This puts them at increased risk should an emergency occur in a remote location. Recognizing this, we utilize Blackline Safety — a system that connects the company’s vehicle safety system with the four-gas personal monitors that employees are required to wear when visiting production sites. The monitor detects personal movements, alerting other team members if help may be needed. The system also enables two-way communication via cellular and satellite capabilities at 100% of our remote sites.
Driver Safety
Most of our fleet drivers spend time behind the wheel of a motor vehicle daily. We work to improve driver safety through three programs: driver education, driver monitoring and safe-driver recognition.
In 2021 Chesapeake experienced an increase in our preventable motor vehicle accident (MVA) rate. Although we saw fewer vehicle incidents year over year, our employees also drove less (due to divestitures) affecting our rate calculation. Of our 2021 preventable accidents, 61% took place at or near parked locations (not public roadways) and occurred at low speeds. We have reapplied focus to these types of incidents to raise greater awareness of both driving on location and on the roadway.
Chesapeake fleet drivers participate in four online and classroom courses, including the SMITH Driving System Program, which offers hands-on training common in driver’s education and defensive driving curriculum. After this training, employees begin to acquire consistent habits that help prevent accidents.
Employees must complete SMITH Driving System training before being assigned to a company vehicle.
Each Chesapeake vehicle includes an in-vehicle monitoring system (IVMS) to identify employee driving habits and address safety concerns. Employees are alerted when they speed, accelerate too fast or brake suddenly, and supervisors review reports of their employees’ driving performance on a weekly basis. The data gathered by this system is used to produce an IVMS rate as a leading indicator of our driving performance. The IVMS rate provides our management team with key insights into driver habits, which can help prevent on-road motor vehicle incidents.
We offer a recognition program that awards points to drivers who reach mileage milestones without triggering an IVMS alert. Recognition points may be exchanged for prizes, including the opportunity to buy a retired fleet vehicle at a 50% discount.
Ergonomics
To further protect employee health and safety while on the job, we offer dedicated ergonomics resources. Through our online ergonomics training module and a workstation posture evaluation tool, we encourage employees to maintain healthy posture and avoid injuries associated with overusing muscles and repeated tasks.
Corporate Campus Safety
Our corporate campus employees also have ownership in maintaining our safety culture. Through targeted communications, we increase safety awareness in the corporate environment, focusing on behavior often caused by distraction or lack of safety knowledge. Tangible safety tips, safety meetings and floor wardens all help to increase our safety performance on our corporate campus.
