Case Studies > Huntsman Corporation Reduces U.S. Contractor TRIR by 74% with Avetta

Huntsman Corporation Reduces U.S. Contractor TRIR by 74% with Avetta

Company Size

1,000+

Region

America

Country

United States

Product

Avetta

Tech Stack

Online Prequalification Forms
Contractor Management System
Supply Chain Risk Management

Implementation Scale

Enterprise-wide Deployment

Impact Metrics

Cost Savings
Customer Satisfaction
Employee Satisfaction
Productivity Improvements
Waste Reduction

Technology Category

Functional Applications - Enterprise Resource Planning Systems (ERP)
Platform as a Service (PaaS) - Connectivity Platforms
Platform as a Service (PaaS) - Data Management Platforms

Applicable Industries

Chemicals

Applicable Functions

Facility Management
Procurement
Quality Assurance

Use Cases

Predictive Maintenance
Regulatory Compliance Monitoring
Remote Asset Management
Supply Chain Visibility

Services

Cloud Planning, Design & Implementation Services
System Integration
Training

About The Customer

Huntsman Corporation is a publicly traded global manufacturer and marketer of differentiated chemicals with 2014 revenues of approximately $13 billion including the acquisition of Rockwood’s performance additives and TiO2 businesses. Their chemical products number in the thousands and are sold worldwide to manufacturers serving a broad and diverse range of consumer and industrial end markets. They operate more than 100 manufacturing and R&D facilities in more than 30 countries and employ approximately 16,000 associates within their 5 distinct business divisions.

The Challenge

Paper forms and Excel spreadsheets. That’s how Huntsman Corporation managed its contractors in the past. A global company with headquarters in Texas and offices around the world, Huntsman depended on two or three individuals to track the statuses of its contractors, according to David Matheny, Huntsman Corporate Safety. Contractors filled out paper prequalification forms (PQFs) and information would be saved in spreadsheets that served as a contractor database. When plant managers needed to know the status of a given contractor and whether they were cleared to work at the site, “I’d get the phone call because they didn’t have access to that data,” says Matheny. “Very inefficient” is how he remembers that period, “and very, very time consuming.”\n\nMatheny is responsible for environment, health, and safety at Huntsman. It’s his job to ensure that contractors who work with the company as part of its supply chain meet training and safety requirements. Matheny readily admits that the company’s manual, in-house method for tracking contractors meant much of his time was spent managing paperwork. “And that’s just not the best use of my time,” he says. It took him away from his real job: creating a world-class safety organization. This includes visiting the sites to conduct training and ensure safety procedures are followed. Before contractors can begin working with Huntsman, they must complete a prequalification evaluation with information about safety records and insurance.

The Solution

After much discussion and careful consideration, Huntsman partnered with Avetta. The Huntsman team quickly realized that attempting to build their own solution would have been an enormous job. “The scope of what we would need to do was overwhelming,” says Matheny in retrospect. “There’s no way we could do that ourselves. Avetta turned out to be a bargain.”\n\nAs an Avetta customer, Huntsman now had immediate access to contractors and consultants it otherwise would not have known about—much less evaluated. Says Matheny, “Because Avetta had already prequalified these people, we’re getting that expertise and experience.” Suddenly the universe of available contractors was much larger.\n\nToday, the Avetta service is well established at Huntsman and an accepted part of its supply chain risk management strategy. When a new contract is signed by Huntsman and one of its contractors, the purchasing buyer quickly and easily adds them to a database of approved contractors at a specific Huntsman site. That database is managed online through an Avetta-maintained website, which is accessible to the purchasing manager, the contractor, and personnel at each facility. This gives all required parties immediate access to the contractor’s status.

Operational Impact

The secure, online contractor database is a vast improvement over the old paper-based, manually tracked system. Updated information, including insurance certificates and safety data, is instantly available to everyone with a need to know—from the plant manager to the security guard at the entrance gate to the contractor awaiting a start date.
The fact that the system is hosted and maintained by Avetta relieves Huntsman of that cost and responsibility.
The solution also allows Huntsman to take advantage of a wealth of industry data that Avetta tracks for its customers. The data concerning industry requirements and standards allows Huntsman to benchmark itself against peer companies and look for areas of improvement.
The Avetta data also enables Huntsman to set objective expectations about each contractor’s performance. No more lengthy phone calls to check on a contractor’s paperwork or application process, and no more long conversations about why a contractor’s flag is red or yellow.
Contractors now expect to be measured against their peers and evaluated consistently, without the subjective bias that could influence evaluations in the past. The data on each contractor is precise, which in turn helps Huntsman provide targeted training, improve safety, and ultimately reduce risk at the job site.

Quantitative Benefit

Since Huntsman switched to Avetta, the total recordable incident rate (TRIR) for all of its contractors in U.S. sites has dropped by 74%.
In the past, the time from signed contract to entrance at the front gate typically took up to six weeks; today the whole process can be completed in just a couple days.