Covestro also secures a five-year streak for Product Safety Awards
Pittsburgh, May 21, 2020 — With a nod to an inventive new take on safety training programs, the American Chemistry Council (ACC) honored Covestro LLC with the Responsible Care® Initiative of the Year Award. And, for the fifth year running, the ACC also presented Covestro with its Responsible Care® Product Safety Award.
Following a presentation during the ACC’s annual Responsible Care® Conference, which was held virtually for the first time this year, Covestro’s “Escape Room: Hazard Recognition Safety Training” took top honors as the Initiative of the Year.
The team at Covestro’s Newark, Ohio, facility modeled the interactive training program after the popular “escape room” concept, immersing participants in a timed problem-solving scenario from which they need to “escape.”
The training was designed to increase awareness around five common safety focus areas for manufacturing facilities, including hazardous chemicals, hand safety, lock-out/tag-out, electrical hazards, and slips, trips and falls. Participants were randomly assigned to teams to focus on one of the five key topics, followed by a mock press conference to ensure each team was well versed on its safety topic.
The Escape Room portion of the training was a clue-based program, requiring each team to use clues to solve safety problems related to their focus topic. Once all the safety problems were solved, the team was able to “escape” and open a lock box containing a puzzle piece. The teams then worked together to assemble a puzzle revealing the theme of the Escape Room Hazard Recognition Safety Training program: that safety is a team effort.
“We wanted to instill a sense of team safety while learning in a fun, interactive environment,” said Adam Houdeshell, one of the Covestro developers of the Escape Room training concept. “Not only was the Escape Room format well received by Newark employees, but the program’s design allows it to be easily adapted for other locations and training topics.” Additional members of the development team included Chad Embrey, Mel Van Balen and Chase Ashcraft. The Escape Room program has subsequently been implemented at many Covestro sites globally, including in China and India.
Covestro also received the Responsible Care® Product Safety Award for the fifth year in a row for a new platform developed to modernize a manual chemical prioritization and risk characterization process into an efficient, digital tool. The tool, named the Risk Assessment Advisor, allows the company to sort, compare and select prioritized chemicals and assess them for health and environmental risks based on their end-use applications.
“With the Risk Assessment Advisor, Covestro is now better positioned to enhance our commitment to Responsible Care® and the Product Safety Code,” said Lisa Marie Nespoli, product safety manager. “We have a more efficient and standardized process to review projects from a product safety, regulatory and stewardship lens across all our businesses in North America.”
“Safety will always be a core tenant of the Covestro business,” says Haakan Jonsson, chairman and president of Covestro LLC. “The honor of receiving the ACC’s Responsible Care® Initiative of the Year and Product Safety Awards is a testament to the passion, creativity and innovation that surrounds our safety culture. I couldn’t be more proud.”
About Covestro LLC:
Covestro LLC is one of the leading producers of high-performance polymers in North America and is part of the global Covestro business, which is among the world’s largest polymer companies with 2019 sales of EUR 12.4 billion. Business activities are focused on the manufacture of high-tech polymer materials and the development of innovative solutions for products used in many areas of daily life. The main segments served are the automotive, construction, wood processing and furniture, electrical and electronics, and healthcare industries. Other sectors include sports and leisure, cosmetics and the chemical industry itself. Covestro has 30 production sites worldwide and employed approximately 17,200 people at the end of 2019.
Find more information at www.covestro.us.
Covestro Contact:
Russell Glorioso, Phone: +1 412 525-9330
Russell.Glorioso@covestro.com
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This news release may contain forward-looking statements based on current assumptions and forecasts made by Covestro AG. Various known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors could lead to material differences between the actual future results, financial situation, development or performance of the company and the estimates given here. These factors include those discussed in Covestro’s public reports which are available at www.covestro.com. The company assumes no liability whatsoever to update these forward-looking statements or to conform them to future events or developments.
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