In September 2009 the Gladstone Industry Leadership Group (GILG) decided to launch an employee engagement initiative called the Clean and Healthy Air Management Program (CHAMP).

Gladstone industry has a strong culture of continuous improvement in safety and process efficiency. GILG has used CHAMP to build upon this history, put additional focus on environment performance and broaden our site specific thinking to a more collective approach.

Much work has already been done in Gladstone to improve industry environmental performance. In GILG’s individual operations there are many people who have done great things. CHAMP is a way for industry to acknowledge this legacy and build upon it.

CHAMP’s collective approach is its strength. This is because each site’s individual industry expertise and ideas will be pooled and shared with all GILG sites. In this way an improvement idea from one site could be adopted by several sites and thus generate much greater benefits.

This multiplying effect means that even a small idea may be very valuable. Even better, these small ideas are quicker to implement than larger more complex ideas.

As a result CHAMP particularly targets ideas that are easy to put in place. What we call “quick wins”.

Where it makes sense quick wins will be implemented straight away, even before the recommendations of the Clean and Healthy Air for Gladstone (CHAG) report are known. This type of improvement approach is business as usual for GILG members. CHAMP has just given added emphasis to the improvement of environmental performance.

CHAMP will also identify major capital improvement projects. As these multi-million dollar “big hitter” ideas usually have long lead times, they will go hand in hand with the more quickly implemented quick wins.

As part of CHAMP, these larger more complex ideas will be assessed and the type and amount of emissions that they could reduce will be estimated. If the CHAG study identifies a contaminant emission that has to be reduced, this should enable GILG members to quickly respond.

If you have any questions on CHAMP or air quality concerns that you would like me to answer, please go to our forum topic at www.gilg.com.au.

If you would like to have your say and don't know how, please click on this link which shows you how to register and make a comment, anonymously if you wish.

I look forward to hearing from you soon, cheers, Kurt.

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