Case Study for Achieving Zero Injury through a Contractor Assurance Program

Since the Safety Council Texas City (SCTC) organizational inception on June 25, 1987, SCTC has served as a model for innovative solutions for contractors working in the petrochemical industries in Texas City, Texas and throughout the country. Originally founded as a nonprofit corporation by six major industrial facilities and the contractors who provided services, SCTC, formally known as the Contractors Safety Council of Texas City, has enjoyed great success in creating solutions that enhanced safety, health, environmental and security services to the contractor community. Beginning as the first training center to create a common contractor orientation training program for area industry, the SCTC model has been adopted and replicated by numerous Safety Council's along the Gulf Coast. SCTC innovative solutions were first recognized as a model practice in the John Gray Report on Petrochemical Safety commissioned after two serious explosions that occurred in the Houston, Texas area in 1989 and 1990. The report recognized SCTC for creating a generic contractor safety orientation that raised the level of safety awareness for the entire contractor community and recognized the need to offer training services in English and Spanish when it published its findings in 1992. These successes lead other locations to form similar nonprofit Safety Councils that expanded its outreach across the United States. The expanding Safety Council network created a nonprofit parent organization entitled the Association of Reciprocal Safety Councils (ARSC) to facilitate and expand reciprocal services to the contractor and petrochemical community. The core training developed by ARSC members is now taught to approximately 300,000 workers per year and has grown to 24 Safety Council members.