Kemira Awarded Prestigious 10-Year AAR Grand Slam NAR Award
Every year, the AAR’s Hazmat Committee presents the NAR Grand Slam Award to companies that are exemplary shippers of hazardous materials by rail. An award recipient must have been recognized by at least four Class I railroads and had zero non-accident releases (NAR) involving their hazmat shipments the previous calendar year.
Congratulations to Kemira who was awarded a prestigious Grand Slam Award for being nominated by at least four Class 1 railroads for 10 consecutive years!
Lucy Pouliot (Sr. Manager Logistics Operations & Sourcing, Rail North American & Supply Chain Management), Lloyd Moore (Manager, Transportation Safety, Operations, SCM), Tom Bottger (Specialist, Rail Logistics Safety, Operations – SCM), and Gregory Alonso (Specialist, Rail Logistics Safety, Operations – SCM) were in attendance to accept the award.
Ms. Pouliot shared her thoughts on what Kemira has done to achieve this level of success. She first recognized all of the men and women that load and prepare Kemira’s tank cars for shipment, from Kemira’s own plants, as well as their steel mill partners and third-party transloading facilities, all which of operation 24 hours per day, 7 days per week, 365 days per year through all varieties of weather conditions.
There are two key elements that allowed Kemira to achieve 10 consecutive years with ZERO non-accident releases:
- Training and Retraining
Kemira has one corporate environment, health, and safety (EHS) training policy that is implemented at all of their sites and partners’ sites. Several years ago, Kemira developed a comprehensive railcar training and securement package, which Lloyd Moore was instrumental in helping to develop. To support this comprehensive training, Kemira’s rail logistics team has one full-time employee dedicated to rail compliance and safety. Tom Bottger has served in that role for the past five years. Earlier this year, Kemira hired Gregory Alonso to train with Tom on Kemira’s compliance, safety, and training programs and take over the role when Tom retires later this year. In their role, Tom and Greg go out in the field to provide rail safety and securement training (in-person and virtually) to all the sites that load and ship Kemira’s products by rail.
To further support Kemira’s programs, the company encourages and incentivizes their employees to perform safety walks throughout the plants and report any hazardous conditions, near misses, and other potentially unsafe issues to address. The observations reported are reviewed during monthly safety meetings, trends are identified, and communications are made to relevant plants on what they should address to prevent NARs.
- Technology & Continuous Improvement
Kemira embraces new technology that can offer safety solutions. Ten years ago, the company implemented Global Attributes’ handheld inspection systems at all Kemira’s plants, steel mill partner plants, and transloading facilities. This software system has allowed Kemira to effectively eliminate the use of paper checklists. All operators have a handheld mobile device that has railcar loading and inspection checklists, which are uploaded into a portal connected to Kemira’s third-party compliance and fleet management provider. This integrated system provides operators with customized checklists that provide information specific to individual railcars to effectively complete inspections. After inspections are completed, the information is uploaded into the portal where rail logistics coordinators can verify, in real-time (through information, pictures, videos, etc.), compliance and securement of each railcar at the point of loading and inspection to ensure the railcar is properly prepared for shipment and ready to be offered into transportation.
To sum it up, Kemira’s achievement didn’t happen by chance. It was hard work and team effort by all who share the same values of compliance and safety.
Please join CI in congratulating Kemira on this amazing achievement and well wishes for another 10 years with zero NARs!
For the full video of Ms. Pouliot’s acceptance speech, click here.