Cariboo Pulp and Paper started operation in Quesnel here in 1972.
We have a little over 300 people here at the mill.
We're a big economic engine for the city itself and for the community as a whole.
We are a single line craft mill. We make about a thousand metric tons
of NBSK - northern bleach softwood kraft pulp a day.
At Cariboo, the city of Quesnel is built around us,
so our goal here is to minimize the impact of our operation on our community.
The Domtar facility has been in the community of Kamloops since 1965.
We have a production capacity of just over 400,000 air-dried metric tons per year
of softwood kraft pulp.
We employ about 340 people directly.
At a pulp mill, there's many different kinds of hazards.
We have physical hazards, you have mobile equipment, heavy machinery.
You have chemical hazards, you have toxic gases, you have flammable liquids.
Our people are exposed to those chemicals
and we need to handle them in the safest manner possible.
If they're not managed properly, if they're not designed properly,
it leaves us open for having a potential for a catastrophic event.
Understanding the risks and the hazards that we have and the processes themselves
are very fundamental to protecting our people.
We feel that it's our civic duty
to make sure that we have management systems and processes in place
to ensure that our mill has negligible impact to the community.
We do talk a lot about individual safety, but process safety management takes it a step further,
and you're really looking at ensuring that you don't have
accidental and potentially catastrophic releases
of highly hazardous chemicals and hazardous energy on a large scale.
In a simple way, it's keeping the stuff that's supposed to be in the tanks and the pipes
in the tanks and the pipes.
Our focus on process safety is about protecting our people.
It's everything from how you train your people, how you prove competency of your people.
It's integrating new systems into your mill.
It's going to be how you manage change at your mill.
It's a more proactive approach to our safety business than a reactive approach.
The first step in developing a process safety management system -
and this sounds obvious - is deciding you want one.
If you're doing that, you need to identify what
chemicals or what processes you want to include in that.
That's called setting the boundaries.
Then you've got to identify the process safety information.
You need to identify what materials are involved - quantities, pressures, temperatures.
You compile all that information, you make sure you have an up-to-date and accurate
process and instrumentation diagram that shows the flows and the controls.
We get together a cross-functional team that includes process engineers,
production people, operators, people that could represent all areas of the mill,
then you develop your process hazard analysis, or what we call a PHA,
and this is an organized method where you look at your process
and you break it down into small manageable categories we call nodes,
and you look at each node in detail.
The hazard analysis - that is the most important aspect of everything - it's like the framework.
It reinforces the need to have documentation up to date
so that you can really analyze the process.
We need to make sure that all our employees on site
are aware of what we're doing, what the processes are,
and have them involved in the decision making.
We all sit down in a room and we analyze it together.
We ask ourselves questions: what could possibly happen.
It just makes sure that we've understood, evaluated,
and analyzed all the hazards associated with the chemicals that we're handling
and that everybody understands what's expected of them
and what we're supposed to do to handle these chemicals safely.
It's taken this process safety management to a level that I've
never experienced before in my career.
One of the regulated chemicals that fell within
the process safety management program is liquid sulfur dioxide.
For 35 years we used liquid SO2 in our bleaching process.
It's quite a hazardous chemical and we figured out a way to eliminate its use in the process,
so two years ago we got rid of liquid sulfur dioxide from our site.
To me that's a perfect example of how process safety management should work.
You've identified the risks and you've come up with the ultimate control measure.
You've eliminated it completely.
One of the corporate commitments absolutely essential to this is that we
do an audit every three years.
Have there been quality upsets?
Have there been potential releases?
Have there been actual releases?
Has there been any changes in the process?
Is there new equipment that you want to introduce?
So you bring all that information forward
and you reconsider that as part of the new re-validation of the process hazard analysis.
We actually found a few things that we didn't realize were out there
as far as potential risks and when you look at them
those risks are much higher than we really want to accept,
so we're doing things to mitigate those risks now.
The whole process safety piece has helped us identify that,
so it's actually been quite positive what we've seen so far.
When you're setting up a process safety management system,
it's absolutely essential that you own the process.
It has to be owned, maintained, and operated by the mill,
but it really isn't something that you need to do entirely on your own.
There's lots of resources out there and it's appropriate that you get those involved
early and often.
The expertise exists - you can bring it in to assist you, but in the end you own the process.
I think other facilities can learn from the systems and
the processes and procedures that we put in place
to implement this program and they can feel more comfortable
about their operations in their communities.
One of the biggest things is learning that it is going to be a journey.
It's not something that is going to be really quick, right? It's a change in culture.
Implementing a good, robust, and rigorous process safety management program takes people resources,
and it takes money, and it takes time - and it's definitely worth it.
Domtar owns the risk of running the pulp mill,
handling these chemicals, and we have to do it the safest possible way
to make employees feel safe, our communities safe, protect our business, protect our assets,
and process safety management is the way we do it at Kamloops and it works for us.
Process safety really helps our business and our facility to be a lot more predictable
and that's true for safety, it's true for reliability,
it's true for costs, and it's true to our success.
By understanding and controlling the risks
of the release of highly hazardous chemicals and hazardous energy,
you're really not only improving the safety of the people on the plant site,
but you're actually enhancing the safety of the community in which you operate.
Yeah, that's a good feeling at the end of the day.