J. Brett Harvey
President & CEO
CONSOL Energy

Last month, Art Sanda took the industry to task for promoting, “the industry’s ludicrous cry of ‘Zero Fatalities’.”  His thesis was that life is not perfect, people make mistakes, and Acts of God will happen. Instead of promoting the impossible, he said, we should promote the idea that each of us must take responsibility for safety one day at a time.

Well, a fair number of people at CONSOL were heating up a kettle of tar and getting the feathers after they read that, because we believe that Zero Accidents, let alone Zero Fatalities, is achievable.

But to make sure that we weren’t being unfair to Art, I read his piece again and I think we are on the same page, at least on some points.  First, we agree that industry’s goal must be to “make safety a reality.”  Second, we agree that safety must be more than just a slogan.  Third, we agree that people must be individually responsible for safety.

However, we part company with Art on one point on which the whole discussion of safety turns.  We believe we can be at zero every day.  We are closer than he thinks.  But we will never get to zero if we accept the premise that “stuff happens.”

The U.S. coal industry has made substantial safety progress.  In 1975, we had 1,068 fatalities compared with only 22 in 2005.  The coal industry has a better overall safety record than many other sectors of the economy and we are far ahead of countries such as China, where the coal mine fatality rate is 13 PER DAY.

But I believe we can eliminate accidents altogether.  Last year 7,515 CONSOL Energy employees worked the entire year accident free.  That is 97 percent of our workforce.  Is it really a stretch to think we can’t get to 100 percent?

I like to think of safety as a triad. Compliance with the law is the first element. Failure to comply with the law is unacceptable job performance.

 However, compliance alone will not eliminate accidents.  We have numerous laws regarding speed and driving behavior on our roads, yet accidents still occur. Laws are not enough.

Compliance with the law is only one element in the safety triad.

The second is the technology/safety interface. 

We have an obligation to engineer our mines to eliminate, to the extent humanly possible, the physical conditions that cause accidents. With the prodigious engineering capacity in the industry and in the country, there is no reason that this element of the triad cannot be achieved.

The third, and most important element of the safety triad, is the human element -- a point Art made in his editorial.  At CONSOL, we refer to it as the culture of safety.

In our culture, each employee must make safety a core value. Working safely is a condition of employment at CONSOL Energy and we hold every employee responsible for it.

In our culture, we pay attention to the signals we send everyday by the manner in which we run the business.  Does production trump safety, or does safety trump production?  Our commitment is to a culture where safety trumps production, where it trumps profits, where it trumps all other rules, policies or procedures. We empower every employee to stop the operation if he believes that safety is being compromised., and we make them accountable.

We believe in constant analysis and observation of job procedures and processes.  The goal is to root out any action that could lead to an accident and replace it with a better one.

We believe in having a constant conversation about safety and we believe there is no monopoly on good ideas when it comes to eliminating accidents. Everyone should be engaged in the conversation.

We believe it is essential to give employees the tools and the training they need to reach their full potential as productive and safe contributors.

And we believe we must submit to the discipline of constant training and evaluation rather than just the periodic training required by law.

As part of our AT ZERO accidents program, we ask employees to say why they are personally committed to being AT ZERO every day.  Many say, “So I can come home to my family” or “So I will be around to teach my son to fish”.  By asking them to identify, articulate and visualize their reason, we hope to create a deep, personal reminder of why this is important.

In that regard, maybe Art and I aren’t so far apart after all.