Join us in welcoming USW Local 202, Delek to the TOP program!

The United Steelworkers Tony Mazzocchi Center (USWTMC) is excited to announce that USW Local Union 13-202 and Delek, a refinery in Tyler, Texas, recently joined the USW’s Triangle of Prevention (TOP) program.

History

The TMC began conversations with local union leadership and management at Delek about the TOP program in 2023. Union and management were aligned in their desire to roll out the program at their site. Jeff Harris, the refinery manager, previously worked at facilities which utilized TOP and was very supportive when it came to bringing the program to Delek in Tyler. This collaborative effort helped to secure the program at the site, and continues to help support it.

“I am excited to see the TOP program finally taking off in Tyler,” Phillip Collins said.

“This will be a great tool for our refinery.”

Collins is an electrical and instrumentation technician, and USW member.

Rollout process

We started to roll out the program in March 2024, when Steve Doherty and I led an “Introduction to TOP” learning opportunity for local union leadership and management partners. We followed the introduction with a three-day Incident Investigation training. Between then and now, members from the site were sent to Pittsburgh, Pa., for Trainer Fundamentals Classes (TFCs) and TOP representative Leadership training. These courses, required for TOP union leadership, are crucial for the development of a TOP team and worker-trainers (WTs) at the site.

“I feel that the TOP investigator training has inspired and empowered me to make my workplace a safer place to work, leading to it being a better job site for everyone,” Joe Hutchinson said.

Hutchinson serves as the union health and safety, and process safety management (PSM) representative.

I also traveled back to Delek to mentor these WTs in order for them to take over their own program, which they have since accomplished aggressively and effectively. The TOP union leadership team conducted several TOP Awareness training sessions, projecting that the entire plant population – hourly and salary workers – will have went through the training by the end of fall. TOP Awareness training is an eight-hour, awareness-level course specific to the program, which aims to educate all workers at the site about the program. Education includes but is not limited to information on hazard recognition and near-miss prevention, Systems of Safety and Incident Investigation, reporting and tracking leading and lagging indicators, and more.

I assisted the team with their second wave of Incident Investigation training, and I am confident in their abilities to facilitate the training without direct mentorship in the future.

Program success

From my experience thus far, this is one of the most aggressive program rollouts that I have seen. There is strong support from local union leadership and management. For example, the refinery manager comes to all of the training sessions and speaks to the importance of the training and his experiences with the TOP program.

Jeff Gaddis, the local president, is a worker-trainer, trained investigator and has also attended TOP Rep. Leadership training. TOP Representative Sean Tackett gave up his spot as the local vice president to be able to put all his focus into the TOP program.

The site is modifying some of their health and safety procedures to include TOP. They continue to use all of the WTs as much as they can in all of the training sessions to help them gain experience and remain the faces of the program. Even though the conversations started last year, if you look at things from starting in mid-March and having almost all employees through TOP Awareness training in six months, that reveals a pretty serious team and a successful kickoff to a meaningful health and safety program.

“Having seen the benefits of a mature TOP program at another site, I was excited by the opportunity to bring the program to Tyler, and thankful for the USW leadership for bringing it to us,” Senior Director of Production Assurance Brian Ruff said.

“The knowledge of the instructors, structure and materials provided by the program have made the whole thing a very positive experience for all.”

The site started releasing events to be investigated through the TOP program almost immediately after the program was implemented.

For more pictures from the roll out process, check out our TOP photo album here.