Managing the Mega Project to Zero Harm
With Hector Salazar, GM of Construction Safety at HPCL-Mittal Energy Limited
Bathinda, India
It’s a little airport. It was a small plane. And it was still another hour by cab before I got to Bathinda. But once onsite at the HMEL refinery, in what seemed to be the middle of nowhere, there was a huge mega-project going on. Thousands of workers coming and going. I counted 15 cranes—big cranes—but there might have been more. I got there before COVID. Things were on schedule and no lost time accidents. I got to present to the leadership group and Hector also go me in front of the managers or the onsite supervisors for all of the major contractors working on the project. Then COVID hit.
Hector has been a guest on the expert panel webinars we did all over the world when we had a show about managing contractors through the pandemic. But that’s been over a year. The project is still going on and things are still going very well. However, it isn’t just what they have achieved—it’s also about how they did it.