Face to Face
Wayne Swann
Safety Programs Supervisor

Wayne Swann was born and raised in Wyoming and followed the oil boom to Alaska in 1976 when ARCO transferred him to help develop Prudhoe Bay. He liked the idea of moving to Alaska because, as far as he could tell, it was just like Wyoming, only bigger and with more opportunity. Wayne started working with Alyeska as a safety consultant contractor in 2003 and joined the staff as Safety Programs Supervisor in April 2005.

Wayne has four children, three dogs and one ’96 Corvette. He spends his free time fishing, hunting, woodworking and obeying all traffic laws while driving his Corvette.

Q: What are your duties?

My primary responsibility is to implement Alyeska’s Loss Prevention System® (LPS). This system is designed to promote regulatory compliance and prevent incidents that result in losses including personal injuries, equipment or property damage, product quality incidents such as spills and operational or system inefficiencies. We don’t want any near misses either.

I lead a team of six staff members to proactively identify and eliminate factors that could cause or contribute to injuries, losses or regulatory noncompliance. A major LPS goal is helping Alyeska reach “Target Zero,” or zero workdays lost due to job-related injuries.

Q: How are you implementing LPS?

LPS fosters workplace culture and management techniques that proactively avoid losses by promoting and rewarding safe behavior. We are building this culture by holding workshops beginning in late August to introduce the LPS to key Alyeska managers. We plan to expand the program by providing 8-hour training sessions for all Alyeska employees beginning in November. Our timeline is to fully implement the LPS by the second quarter of 2006.

Q: How will Alyeska maintain LPS after full implementation?

The LPS must become a core corporate value. All managers must fully support the system and foster worker commitment and accountability at every level. All employees must systematically assess risks, train to avoid risks, investigate and analyze incidents to understand their causes, and continually assess and improve operations to minimize loss.

Q: What are the key challenges to implementing LPS?

We must communicate the benefits of LPS so that everybody understands the value of doing LPS-related tasks. It is also going to be a huge task to adapt the LPS so that it will work for a diverse work force of employees and contractors who perform a wide range of tasks, often in extreme environments, along an 800-mile-long pipeline system.