HSE&EM Recognized with Five Industry Achievement Awards
When it comes to workplace awards, many are given for major occurrences that did happen. However, for some parts of our organization, much of their best work is measured by the unexpected events that didn’t. When it comes to workplace safety and equipment reliability at the Kansas City National Security Campus (KCNSC), our Health, Safety, Environment & Equipment Maintenance (HSE&EM) team works year-round to enable operational excellence, protect its people, better the environment and optimize the dependability of production machinery.
KCNSC’s HSE&EM organization was recently presented with five awards due to benchmark performance delivered in fiscal year (FY) 2023. These awards included the 2023 Small Flows Industrial Safety Award from the Missouri Water Environment Association (MWEA), the Million Work Hours and Occupational Excellence Achievement Awards from the National Safety Council and two Honeywell Aerospace Process Excellence Awards.
“We’re honored to be recognized by different organizations for results achieved through an intentional strategy executed by an exceptional staff,” said Tom Moibi, Director of HSE&EM. “KCNSC continues to grow a culture of learning and engagement that enables the level of benchmark performance we’ve come to expect year-over-year, but this can only happen by staying disciplined to our management operating system and persistently pursuing continuous process improvements.”
“I am extremely proud of what our team has accomplished,” added Integrated Supply Chain Vice President Dylan Plemons. “While the external acknowledgement is indeed an exciting recognition for the organization, personally knowing that the HSE&EM team is committed to ensuring the health and safety of our employees is even more rewarding as a leader in the business.”
What is HSE&EM?
The HSE&EM organization is an integrated business partner that facilitates best-in-class risk management and uncompromising commitment to employee well-being and environmental protection. Our division differs from many other companies’ health and safety organizations in that it also includes production equipment reliability and oversight of manufacturing machinery. The team serves our more than 7,000 KCNSC employees and supports over 5,000 pieces of production equipment, all while closely engaging with the Department of Energy (DOE), National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) and Kansas City Field Office (KCFO), as well as Honeywell Corporate, KCNSC suppliers and several regulatory and public safety agencies. This cross-collaboration supports HSE&EM oversight at all levels of the company in alignment with our ongoing mission.
Core services provided by HSE&EM include production equipment maintenance and engineering, employee well-being, occupational safety and health, emergency management and environmental protection. This means the team has a hand in everything from choosing safety glasses for the factory to overseeing fire protection initiatives, air cleanliness levels and even the types of ergonomic chairs in your cubicle. And, in addition to facilitating the prevention of workplace injuries and predictive equipment maintenance, HSE&EM closed more than 10,300 corrective maintenance work orders across our production assets in FY23. 
“The key pillars of the HSE&EM strategy are transforming our risk management strategies, generating data analytics through digital transformation and advancing a culture of learning, engagement and well-being,” explained Tom. “These elements help ensure we’re intentional with both running and improving the business and are all critical in the support of KCNSC’s current and future mission scope.”
Recent Awards and Achievements
Continuity is a vital consideration in the efficacy of safety and maintenance programming, and one that KCNSC’s HSE&EM organization has a rich history of. For the past six years, the KCNSC has achieved and sustained benchmark injury rate performance across the DOE complex and similar industry peers. In FY23, HSE&EM secured multiple performance awards for demonstrating excellence in employee safety.
2023 Small Flows Industrial Safety Award from the MWEA
As part of a joint effort with the NNSA and Jacobs (a third-party wastewater management vendor), the MWEA presented KCNSC with the 2023 Small Flow Industrial Safety Award. This award is presented annually to two industrial facilities (large and small flows) that demonstrate the best safety rating as determined by safety, accident, injury and water treatment data. Facilities are only permitted to apply once every three years for this award, and Honeywell has previously won the small flows honor in 1996, 2001, 2012, 2016 and 2020.
Million Work Hours and Occupational Excellence Achievement Awards from the National Safety Council
One of two FY23 honors from the National Safety Council, the Million Work Hours Award recognizes organizations that have completed at least 1 million consecutive work hours without an occupational injury or illness resulting in days away from work. During a seven-month span in FY23, KCNSC recorded more than 7.6 million hours without a lost-time incident.
The National Safety Council also awarded KCNSC the Occupational Excellence Achievement Award for an injury and illness record better than or equal to 50% of the Bureau of Labor Statistics for their North American Industry Classification System code – a category determined by a company’s industry. In FY23, KCNSC achieved a lost workday case rate of 0.08, meaning it performed an estimated 7.5 times better than similar industries throughout the year. Tom said he credits each of these achievements to an engaged workforce that both executes an intentional strategy and practices safety as a core value daily.
Process Excellence Awards from Honeywell Aerospace
KCNSC earned two Process Excellence Awards from Honeywell Aerospace for projects executed at both Kansas City and New Mexico Operations (NMO). These awards recognize the outcomes of strategic initiatives, as well as commitment to continuous process improvement at an organizational level.
NMO focused efforts on bolstering the behavior-based safety (BSAFE) program to drive peer-to-peer engagement in proactively identifying and addressing workplace at-risk conditions and behaviors. In addition to advancing a culture of learning and participation by increasing the number of BSAFE observations, the project improved the quality of the submissions, enhanced office safety and simplified the BSAFE submission process. As a result of this initiative, peer-to-peer observations increased by 52% over a six-month period and the time spent submitting each observation decreased by 43%. Additionally, the status and metrics of observations submitted are now shared at the NMO Health Safety Environment Management System Council meetings and at tier meetings.
At the Kansas City site, the team invested in the implementation of predictive maintenance (PdM) strategies in support of reliability-centered upkeep for manufacturing equipment. By maturing the PdM program, KCNSC continued its transition from corrective or predictive maintenance to intelligent upkeep based on real-time data that resulted in several wins throughout FY23 and enabled increased machine uptime.
“The creativity and continuous improvement culture demonstrated by our equipment maintenance team has delivered directly to our mission performance,” said Dylan of PdM’s impact on execution.
Conclusion
While the HSE&EM team works continuously to prevent and mitigate our on-site health, safety and equipment maintenance concerns, insight from employees is an invaluable resource. You can make a difference in workplace safety and equipment reliability by identifying and addressing improvement opportunities in your work area. Employees are encouraged to conduct Gembas with peers or leadership, engage the Safety Squad, submit a Good Catch for existing issues or near misses and leverage tier meetings to help others apply insights in their work areas. If you identify risks that need to be addressed, use the appropriate avenue to escalate and request HSE&EM intervention.
