Email...oh email...

Assalamualaikum warahmatullahi wa barakatuh...

How do you manage your email? Work emails to be specific.. For me, I glance through the email, especially if its from my boss and my team mate. If I need to look into the detail, I'll come back to it when time permits. But the important thing is, I will make sure that I know who sent what email and on what issue. Apparently almost all colleague of mine and my dear boss don't do that. Only the trainee bother to read my email.

We have an event yesterday, a global event and I was the focal point for our team. I have summed up where and when each of us needs to be, but they just don't bother to read the email. Sama ja boss ka colleague ka.. And knowing that I did made the effort to tell them personally via SMS, verbal and even go to the length of printing out my email and asking my colleague to pass to the boss as I was rushing out and didn't managed to talk to Mr Boss yet.

Somehow this colleague, he was not properly listening to my request, gave the printed schedule to another colleague which already know where she is going. Lo and behold, when I came back to the office, the boss pester me with the question, 'So where do we go, do we know yet?' And my boss is the typical pushy Chinese boss that keeps asking multiple questions before you can even answer the first one. Frustrating ok! Bad enough he didn't read my email, and now he did not get that bloody piece of paper that I printed out.

This is just one example, and its on social event. There has been way too many occasions, my work email was not read properly, things that I have completed, he keeps coming back to me. I know they may have like 200+ unread email, but for God sake, don't do this. We are a team, I don't how many times I've said, read my email, its all in it. Up to a point I drag him to see my screen, go to my sent item and showed him this is what I sent you. The details are here.

Somehow I wonder how much hijab can Allah's put to some people that can they be so blinded? Geram betui...

OK, enough rantings for today. Till next time.

Wassalam. 

P-290, my weekends for the next 2 months

Assalamualaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh...

Seems like all my travelogue could not go pass Day-1 eh? Hahaha.. malas ya amat! So now, in order to get myself back in the blogging mojo again, let me share one thing that is for sure I will need to write, at least once a week.

I have been enrolled to attend this course P-290 HSSE and SP in Projects in June this year. Its part of my IDP (Individual Development Plan). Brace yourself, you'll be seeing more of these Shell abbreviation in the future..hehe..So here we go... This course is to be done via 2 phases, first one is the course pre-work, that we need to submit weekly assignment and upon completing that we will be attending the F2F (face to face) course in June. There is a learning portal that we log on to and obtain all the course and reference materials. The assignment has to be submitted no later that 11AM Sunday every week. Failing which, I will not be allowed to attend the F2F. We don't want that, do we? :)

So from this week onwards, I will share with you my assignments. The reason that I am sharing here is:
1. I need to get back my writing mojo, so this will be a good warm up (I hope!)
2. I am almost 100-200% sure that none of you are working in the same company and would be attending the similar course in the near or far into the future. Therefore, there will be no issue of copy and paste of my assignment.

Question 1:  Consider what you know about leadership in general and HSSE and SP leadership in particular. What are the key attributes of good HSSE and SP leadership?

A good HSSE and SP leaders has few key attributes that can be measured against them. A leader must be authentic. He/she must be able to communicate his/her own vision of how Goal Zero can be realized and what is expected from the working team ensure that the vision can be achieved. The leader must also shows his commitment by either leading or participating in core HSSE activities such as team HSE meetings, management reviews and incidents investigation. 
Another key attributes of a good HSSE and SP leader is to be mindful of the HSSE risk associated with the business and how they are managed. He/she must also be able to obtain assurance that controls to manage the risk are effective and a leader must take appropriate corrective action if he/she thinks the condition is vice versa.
A good HSSE and SP leader should be able to collaborate with different parties at different level in his/her organization. It’s important for the leaders to be able to engage, influence and align join venture and contracting partners on the importance of HSSE leadership. The leader should work with the key stakeholders to identify areas to improve HSSE performance and agree on the improvement action plan. 
Last but not least, a good HSSE and SP leader should be able to ensure that his/her organization is well motivated. This can be achieved by the leaders themselves coaching and developing the personnel in effective HSSE management. Leaders should ensure that individuals are hold accountable for their HSSE behaviours and performance and corrective actions such as consequence management should be applied consistently for any non-compliance. Leaders should also make clear that performance reward include HSSE behaviours as one of the criteria, and the leaders should provide constructive feedback to personnel/contractors in that regards.  

Question 2: Early in a project, it is necessary to manage the HSSE and SP risks for the front-end phases and at the same time, take in the big picture view to ensure that the right strategies and agreements are in place for HSSE and SP risks. Leaders have to make sure the project identifies all of the risks, technical and non-technical, and strikes the right balance between them. What key actions should leaders take to make sure that HSSE and SP are properly integrated into the project design with the right balance?

In order to ensure that HSSE and SP are properly integrated into the project design with the right balance, the proper HEMP process should be applied. It prescribed that hazards or risks should be identified right from the first project phase in order to assign the right controls and mitigations. This exercise requires a multi discipline participation. Leaders should ensure that various discipline are given opportunity to play their part since the beginning of the project. During the risk identification, a risk brain storm tool called TECOP (Technical, Economic, Commercial, Organizational, and Political ) could be used to confirm the both technical and non-technical risks are identified. Once the risks are identified at early stage of the project,it will then be used to develop the HSSE and SP plan. The plan will be able to capture all necessary works that needs to be conducted throughout the life-cycle of the project and it will provide input to a seamless integration with all other project elements such as cost and schedule. 

Question 3: During the construction phase of a project, the leaders have a significant impact on the safety culture of the site. Describe some key actions a leader should take to establish a strong safety culture?

First and foremost a leader should understand what are the current safety culture on site. It can varies from pathological to as high as generative. Having understanding of the culture, leaders would then understand the gaps from what he expects the culture that he/she expected and formulate an action plan to close the gaps. Part of the action required to close the gap is to provide appropriate training to the workforce.
A leader should also ensure that the project premise capture safety as part of the deliverables throughout the project life cycle. A clear target setting by the leader would help the organization to achieve a good safety performance. Based on the premise, a more detailed safety program can be planned and executed to help create a proactive safety culture during construction phase. Workers should be engaged on what they are expected to achieve with regards to safety. The focus of project should emphasis the same importance of executing the project successfully and safely. 
Another aspects that a leader should focus in is the welfare of the workforce in the construction phase. For example, workers are required to use the correct PPE during work activities, hence its the responsibilities of the leader to ensure that there is enough resources that supplies correct PPE for the workforce. Other general well-being of the workers should be considered as well such as health. 
Once a good safety program is being implemented, the leader should make sure that the execution are being monitored and also make provision to recognize the good safety performance within the work crew. This would further motivate others to apply good safety culture on site. It is highly recommended for a leader to provide constructive feedback to the team. The same applies for non-compliance whereby when a wrong safety behaviours were observed, there should be a clear consequence management to be taken. Actions to deal with non-conformance should not be just on the surface. In order to inculcate a good safety culture, the real cause of the condition to happen (might be a person or a process) has to be managed as well.

Don't be fooled into thinking that I came up with the answers myself, its all in the course materials. Though it may seem like a copy paste exercise, I have to admit its not that straight forward. I have to present the answers the way the questions asked for, which is not that straightforward in the course materials either. The truth is, I have the materials since last year, tried reading it few times, but nothing sticks. Only when I started to do this exercise, I began to appreciate the materials and able to relate a bit more. Guess that's the aim of the exercise anyway. 

Its been a while since I read for the intention of answering questions (read: study). Hakak dah tua dik...hehehe. Respect those that can continue formal education till old age. 

Till next time, wassalam.