National Safety Council honors Gulf Coast Partners with 2015 Industry Leader Award

SAN ANTONIO, TX (July 24, 2015) — The National Safety Council announced that Gulf Coast Partners, CPChem U.S. Gulf Coast (USGC) Petrochemicals Project has been honored with a 2015 Industry Leader Award. The award is a component of the Council’s member-exclusive Safety Motivation and Recognition Awards Program. The Industry Leader Award benchmarks outstanding safety achievements among member companies based on self-reported data.

Zachry Group Gulf Coast Partners/CPChem received the accolade in recognition of being among the top 5 percent of member companies, units and facilities that have met the criteria and qualified for the 2015 Occupational Excellence Achievement Award (based on 2014 calendar year data) from NSC. Winners are selected based on NAICS code, lowest total incidence rate and employee work hours.

The project team accumulated more than 1.8 million work hours in 2014 at a recordable incident rate (RIR) of 0.32 or 10 times below the national average identified for the industry. The team has continued this trend with an even lower RIR through the first half of 2015.

“We’re extremely honored to be recognized at this elite level of safety excellence,” said Carl Richardson, Zachry Group Vice President, Safety, Health and Environmental. “It shows the magnitude of safety commitment by the project leadership team and craft workers to maintaining a culture where potential hazards are recognized and work processes are actively managed to minimize the opportunity for accidents.”

The USGC Petrochemicals Project in Old Ocean, TX includes two world-scale polyethylene units that will each produce 500,000 metric tons of plastic resin every year. Zachry Group and Technip formed Gulf Coast Partners to build the facilities for Chevron Phillips Chemical Company LP (CPChem).

“This is a major project that involves more than 1,600 craft workers working approximately 6 million field construction hours,” noted Ralph Biediger, Zachry Group’s President of Construction. “To be truly successful, safety has to be planned and communicated in everything we do. This award is testimony that our primary core value of safety continues to permeate this important project.”

Construction of the USGC Petrochemicals Project began in early 2014 and continues toward a projected completion in early 2017.