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Safety takes centre stage
The innovative use of theatre to engage the multi-cultural workforce has helped to deliver a record-breaking safety performance during construction of the Shell Eastern Petrochemicals Complex (SEPC) in Singapore.
We chose to use theatre to support our safety management initiatives because it communicates in a universal language.
The theatrical performances were part of a creative approach to safety management taken on the project. It helped to improve safety communications and influence behaviour among a diverse construction workforce drawn from across Asia.
Staged by professional actors, the theatre performances used mime, dance, music and comic devices to overcome language and cultural barriers. Scripts drew on the personal experience of the workers, many of whom had left farming communities and fishing villages to work on the Singapore project, with little or no experience of working on a major industrial construction site.
The SEPC project spread across three different sites and at its peak employed some 15,000 workers speaking seven different languages. The industrial theatre was part of a package of initiatives designed to drive safety performance during the construction phase.
As the story of the journey of these workers unfolded in the plays, it went on to deal with a range of on-site safety-related issues they would encounter including hand safety, working at height and commissioning hazards.
“We chose to use theatre to support our safety management initiatives because it communicates in a universal language and so is able to convey important messages to people from very different cultural backgrounds,” says Sipke Mennes, Shell’s Senior Health, Safety, Security and Environment (HSSE) Manager on the SEPC project.
“Theatre provides another means of creating a dialogue with workers, of winning their ‘hearts and minds’, and conveying important messages around safety while avoiding information fatigue,” he says. “Because it connects with people on an emotional level, it increases their willingness to adopt the behaviours that are vital for establishing a strong safety culture on a project.”
He believes the industrial theatre performances and follow-up workshops were important contributors to safety achievements across all parts of the SEPC project. “We saw positive changes in behaviour as a result of the performances, with people taking on personal responsibility for both their own safety and that of their colleagues. This resulted in a significant reduction in HSSE incidents.”
In 2009, the SEPC project achieved 38 million man hours without a lost time incident (LTI), ranking it among the best projects for safety in Shell’s history.
This feature was added to the Innovations section in October 2009