2011

Open Enrollment Classes

December 2011:vPSI Group held an open enrollment version of our fundamental class, Applying vPSI Methods of Problem Solving, December 1st in Houston, Texas. Attendees included employees from Waukesha Pearce Industries, Highmount E&P, and Turner & Townsend.

At the Podium

November 2011: Norman Ritchie of vPSI Group, LLC spoke at the Greater Houston STEPS meeting in Humble, Texas. His presentation was titled "Do the Right Thing When Things Go Wrong."

H-E-A-R Say, Volume 3, Issue 3 available

October 2011: The latest issue of H-E-A-R Say, vPSI Group's newsletter, was made available. In this issue, we discuss the pervasive use of the word should in incident investigations and corrective actions.

Open Enrollment Classes

October 2011: vPSI Group held an open enrollment version of our fundamental class, Applying vPSI Methods of Problem Solving, October 27th in Aberdeen, Scotland. Attendees included employees from Noble Corporation. A total of 200 Noble employees have now been trained in the application of vPSI tools and techniques.

At the Podium

September 2011: Norman Ritchie of vPSI Group, LLC was a speaker and panel member on the subject of “Understanding Lagging Indicators” at the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE) workshop “The Journey Continues: Zero Injuries, Zero Incidents."  The workshop was in Austin, Texas. His presentation was titled "Can Lagging Measures Yield Leading Indicators?"

vPSI Group Sponsored the August Greater Houston STEPS Meeting

August 2011:  vPSI Group, LLC sponsored the August 16th meeting of the Greater Houston STEPS Network at the Humble Civic Center. Readers of H-E-A-R Say might remember that Gary Reznicek of vPSI is the current Vice President of the Greater Houston Steps Network. On the agenda were Cheryl Metzler of BP discussing, "Industrial Hygiene in the Oilfield" and James Shelton of OSHA speaking about, "Recordkeeping - Still on OSHA's Radar."

Open Enrollment Classes

August 2011: vPSI Group held an open enrollment version of our fundamental class, Applying vPSI Methods of Problem Solving, on March 29th in Houston, Texas. Companies in attendance included: ConocoPhillips, Marathon Oil Corporation, and Talisman Energy.

H-E-A-R Say, Volume 3, Issue 2 available

August 2011: The latest issue of H-E-A-R Say, vPSI Group's newsletter, was made available. In this issue, we discuss what has changed as a result of the Macondo incident and introduce the concept of an organizational pain threshold. In a deviation from our normal emphasis on “safety” issues, we look at how problem solving is addressed (or not) in information technology.

At the Podium

June 2011: Norman Ritchie spoke at Shell Real Estate’s June 8th Group Safety Day on the topic “Do the Right Thing Before Things Go Wrong”. The presentation, which approached the subject from the perspective of how we react after things have gone wrong, was recorded in Houston and webcast to Shell locations worldwide.

Open Enrollment Classes

March 2011: vPSI Group held an open enrollment version of our fundamental class, Applying vPSI Methods of Accident Prevention on March 29th in Houston, Texas. Companies in attendance included: Chesapeake Energy, ConocoPhillips, Oceaneering, and Threadgold Safety Management. There was so much demand for this class that a second one was held on April 13th, also in Houston, Texas. Companies represented at this session included: Lubrizol Corporation, Marathon Oil Company, Spectra Energy, and Waukesha-Pearce Industries.

H-E-A-R Say, Volume 3, Issue 1 available

January 2011: The latest issue of H-E-A-R Say, vPSI Group's newsletter, was made available. In this issue, we asked you: What's your problem?  Really, we want to know...

2010

H-E-A-R Say, Volume 2, Issue 4 available

October 2010: The latest issue of H-E-A-R Say, vPSI Group's newsletter, was made available. In this issue, we looked at current and historical catastrophes and how vPSI methodologies can be applied to evaluate them.

H-E-A-R Say, Volume 2, Issue 3 available

July 2010: The latest issue of H-E-A-R Say, vPSI Group's newsletter, was made available. Don't forget to subscribe on the download page so you never miss an issue.

vPSI Out and About in 2010

July 2010: Several vPSI consultants represented vPSI Group at the Greater Houston STEPS Network Vendor Day on 20th July 2010.  Ron Clarke and Gary Reznicek were available to discuss the vPSI System™.

Also in July, Gary Reznicek attended the AIHA Gulf Coast Section Dinner meeting and presentation at Brady's Landing on 15th July 2010.

June 2010: Norman Ritchie spoke at the TCC/ACIT Environmental, Health & Safety Seminar at Moody Gardens in Galveston Texas on 9th June 2010.  He discussed Personal Risk Assessment: a discussion on how we go about making the decisions to accept certain risks and how this thinking is carried over into the work place.

May 2010: Gary Reznicek attended the AIHA Gulf Coast Section dinner meeting in Houston, Texas on 20th May 2010 where Norman Ritchie, vPSI Director, discussed Achieving the Next Level in Health & Safety Performance, providing insight into reassignment of resources and realignment of success measures from consequence mitigation to problem management.

Also in May, Norman Ritchie spoke at the 26th Governor’s Safety and Health Conference and Expo in Louisville, Kentucky on 5th May 2010.  With  Mike Alley of Marathon’s Catlettsburg Refinery, he discussed Applying vPSI Methods of Accident Prevention to Improve Our Safe Work Performance and Increase Productivity.

H-E-A-R Say, Volume 2, Issue 2 available

April 2010: The latest issue of H-E-A-R Say, vPSI Group's newsletter, was made available. Don't forget to subscribe on the download page so you never miss an issue.

Open Enrollment Classes

January 2010: vPSI Group held an open enrollment version of our fundamental class, Applying vPSI Methods of Accident Prevention.  Held in Aberdeen, UK on the 16th of February, it included representatives from Archer and from Halliburton.

H-E-A-R Say, Volume 2, Issue 1 available

January 2010: The third installment of H-E-A-R Say, vPSI Group's newsletter, was made available. Don't forget to subscribe on the download page so you never miss an issue.

2009

vPSI At the Podium in 2009

June 2009: Carl Veley, Founder, vPSI Group, LLC, was a keynote speaker at the Texas Chemical Council / Association of Chemical Industry of Texas Environmental Health and Safety Seminar held at Moody Gardens in Galveston. The topic of Mr. Veley’s talk was Better Accident Prevention with Fewer Resources.

June 2009: Norman Ritchie, co-founder of vPSI Group, gave a keynote address at the IMPACT WORLD Users Conference in The Woodlands, Texas, organized by Syntex Management Systems, Inc.  The topic of Mr. Ritchie's address was Calculating Leading Indicators from Lagging Processes.

H-E-A-R Say, Volume 1, Issue 2 available

October 2009: The second issue of H-E-A-R Say, vPSI Group's newsletter, was made available. Don't forget to subscribe on the download page so you never miss an issue.

H-E-A-R Say, the vPSI Newsletter, Inaugurated

July 2009: H-E-A-R Say, vPSI Group's first edition newsletter was made available. Those familiar with vPSI terminology will recognize the clever pun in the title that includes our acronym for the four components of all accidents: Harm, the unplanned Event, Acts of people, and Reasons for the acts. We will cover more about vPSI terminology in upcoming issues.

Launch of the vPSI Online Corrective Action Assessment Tool & Database^SM

June 2009: vPSI Group, LLC unveiled the new vPSI Online Corrective Action Assessment Tool and Database^SM, its second online tool. In addition, a new portal page was created to be the entry point for all current and future online tools.  More information on this can be found here. 

vPSI Group Welcomes a New Director

May 2009: vPSI Group announces the addition of Ron Clarke to its top management staff, joining the illustrious team of Carl Veley, founder, and Norman Ritchie, co-founder.

2008

vPSI At the Podium in 2008

December 2008: Carl Veley, Founder, vPSI Group, LLC, gave a paper at the International Petroleum Technology Conference in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.  The title of the paper was Corporate HSE Bureaucracies Impede Accident Prevention.

June 2008: Carl Veley presented a paper at the Texas Chemical Council / Association of Chemical Industry of Texas Environmental Health and Safety Seminar held at Moody Gardens in Galveston. The topic of Mr. Veley’s talk was Identifying Hidden and Overlooked Failures.

May 2008: Carl Veley presented a session on Accident Prevention Technology at the University of Texas, Petroleum Extension Service (PETEX).

May 2008: Carl Veley spoke at the Gulf Coast Chapter of the ASSE (American Society of Safety Engineers) on the subject of Accident Prevention Technology.

April 2008: Carl Veley was a speaker and panel member at an SPE (Society of Petroleum Engineers) conference in Nice, France.  The subject of the panel discussion was Learning From Failure.  He also served on the committee that selected papers for presentation at the conference.

Launch of the vPSI Online Pre-Task Planning Tool & Library System^SM

April 2008: vPSI Group, LLC unveiled the new vPSI Online Pre-Task Planning Tool & Library System^SM.  More information on this can be found here. 

vPSI Winners Recognized

March 2008: Lynda Pigula, center, of vPSI Group, LLC with Thom Northcott, Jr. (GES, Inc.), and TJ Northcott (GES, Inc.) at Marathon's Living Our Values Award Ceremony, where GES, Inc received the Small Contractor of the Year Award from Marathon President & CEO, Charles Cazalot.

Marathon's Living Our Values Corporate Social Responsibility Awards recognize and celebrate achievement in health and safety, environmental stewardship, honesty and integrity, corporate citizenship and diversity.

GES, Inc attribute their success in large part to the vPSI System™, which they implemented in 2007. GES, Inc recently achieved certification of their 2007 vPSI Number™, confirming that they are a Continuous Improvement company.

At the awards ceremony, vPSI figured prominently amongst winners' write-ups and presentations:

The HES Upstream Award was won by Marathon's Europe Production Operations who cited "...increased use of leading indicators such as BBS, vPSI, etc." 

The President's Award for Responsible Care went to Catlettsburg Refining, LLC who differentiated themselves as "... the only downstream organization to implement the vPSI method of accident prevention".

vPSI was also referenced by finalists Central Africa Production Operations and Inlet Drilling Alaska, Inc.

2007

vPSI At the Podium in 2007

October 2007: Carl Veley, founder of vPSI Group, LLC presented a paper entitled Using Accident Reports to Forecast Bureaucracy Growth Rates at the IADC Drilling HSE Europe Conference in Copenhagen.

September 2007: Carl Veley of vPSI Group, LLC presented two papers at the SPE Asia Pacific Health, Safety, Security and Environment Conference in Bangkok. Carl's papers were entitled What To Do When People Deliberately Violate Safety Rules and Spreadsheet Simulators That Demonstrate How Statistics Can Lie About Safety Performance. Carl was also a Session Co-Chair for a panel on Contractor Evaluation & Selection and a Panelist for a second session on Partnership in Achieving Common Goals in Safety.

August 2007: Ray Cook of Marathon presented a paper entitled Marathon's Safety Improvement Utilizing the vPSI Method at the ASSE Region III  Professional Development Conference in Fort Worth, Texas.

vPSI Trademark Registration Awarded

September 2007: vPSI Group, LLC received the Certificate of Registration for the vPSI Trademark from Timothy Johnson of Matthews, Lawson & Johnson, PLCC.

Halliburton vPSI Pilot Project Underway

July 2007: Halliburton has selected their Gulf of Mexico Region as the location for a pilot implementation of the vPSI System™. After determination of an initial baseline vPSI Number™, approximately 200 people will undergo vPSI training and receive ongoing mentoring. A final vPSI Number™ will be assessed at year end to demonstrate the impact of vPSI on the organization.

Marathon's Catlettsburg Refinery Trains 66 in vPSI JHA Methods

June 2007: Just completed: training at Marathon's Catlettsburg Refinery for 66 key refinery staff in the vPSI approach to pre-task planning within the JHA / JSA framework. Advanced vPSI methods such as these build on the 1-day Problem Solving & Accident Prevention training class. In total, 230 Catlettsburg personnel are now utilizing vPSI in their work.

vPSI in Africa & Europe with Marathon

June 2007: Marathon's personnel in Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Scotland, Ireland and Norway have been trained in the fundamentals of the vPSI System™ and have joined their US colleagues in using the vPSI Number™ as a key performance indicator. Several Marathon Business Units have proved they enjoy the benefits of a continuous improvement culture by maintaining their vPSI Number™ above the critical 200 threshold. Congratulations!

Contact us for the latest vPSI news.