ABSTRACT
A robust safety culture can always serve a company well, and if well established it should normally be resilient in the face of sudden stresses, but even so, it cannot provide a guarantee of immunity to every setback. Determined leadership and persistence can be necessary to repair any damage suffered, which may sometimes require more than simply rebuilding a plant. There is much for everyone to learn from the difficulties experienced by an iconic British company with a hard-earned reputation for safety about the challenges of managing change and establishing a new safety culture. A team of BP operations, refining and safety experts and salaried and union employees at the Texas City refinery was formed and given terms of reference to determine the cause of the explosion and make recommendations for preventing similar incidents in the future. This chapter describes the facts, what happened and why, and what happened next, concluding with a short summary of lessons to be learned.
