Operators are promoted to supervisor with little preparation: a fix for chemical makers

The night in-charge at an alkyd resin plant resigns. The plant head promotes his best reactor man, someone who can read an acid value trend and feel a batch thickening before the viscosity cup confirms it. He starts the next evening. Within a week he has signed a hot work permit on a vent line nobody had purged with nitrogen. Two handover entries are missing. Most nights he is at the charging hopper with a bag of phthalic flakes instead of watching his crew.

Our reactor, blending and filling plants hub counts this among the habits that keep coming back. Below: the signs on the plant, the bill, its roots and a repair.

• Still on the tools. He opens the reactor manhole, takes the in-process sample and runs the Karl Fischer titration himself, because that is where he feels sure.
• A thin log. Batches made and IBCs filled appear. Valve line-ups, an exotherm that needed extra brine, a weeping mechanical seal and a pending lab result do not.
• Permits on trust. Hot work, line break or vessel entry permits get signed without checking the explosimeter reading, the spades or the lock on the agitator isolator.
• Silence on habits. Old friends skip face shields at the drumming point or leave the earthing clamp hanging. He says nothing.
• Blame in the incident note. A spill at the filter press becomes operator carelessness, with no look at the procedure or the roster.
• Rosters by favour. Night duty and festival weeks fall on a favoured few, and grumbles bypass him.

You lose your best hand at the reactor and gain an unsure supervisor. Batches drift, because nobody is watching jacket temperatures, reflux rates and condenser water across the whole unit. A forgotten sample or an isolated transfer line catches the incoming crew. Loose permits are the gravest exposure. One slip on a solvent header or an acid line can burn or gas someone.

Then the people bill arrives. Operators who were passed over watch him struggle. Steady hands on his crew request a move to another rota. He may leave within a year, worn out by the role or tempted by a rival offering a supervisor title. The plant is now short of a strong operator and an in-charge.

• Promotion is the one reward available for skill, so it is used even on people who prefer the DCS screen to a clipboard.
• The outgoing in-charge has already left, so there is no overlap.
• No one has put the in-charge job on paper, so nobody can teach it.
• Supervisor coaching is pencilled in for a slack month, and a slack month never comes.
• The plant head has no spare hours, and the new in-charge is too proud to ask.

Open last month's shift log and count blank or one-word handover lines. Pull ten recent permits. Is the gas test recorded? Are isolations listed and signed back? Read your last five incident notes and see whether any looked beyond the person. Ask each in-charge how many hours per shift go on field work. Then ask operators privately whether rules hold equally on every crew. Those five checks show where your in-charges are weakest.

1. 1

   Put the in-charge job on one page

   Handover, permits, roster, batch records, first response to an upset or spill, correcting unsafe habits. Also list what he should hand to the crew rather than do himself.

2. 2

   Create a lead operator grade

   Real pay for the person who would rather stay on the panel or the reactor. Then supervision becomes one path among two.

3. 3

   Pick for readiness as well as skill

   Whom do operators go to for help? Who explains calmly during a high-temperature alarm? Talk the candidate through the job before making the offer.

4. 4

   Shadow on another shift

   A few weeks beside an experienced in-charge, running handovers and issuing permits while being watched.

5. 5

   Coach four hard tasks on the plant

   Handover, permits, the corrective word and the incident note, taught with your own log book and permit pad. Coaching of this kind is what our programme for new managers builds.

6. 6

   Review at day thirty, sixty and ninety

   The plant head goes through a handful of logs and permits with him, sits through one handover and asks the crew for their view. Gaps get closed early.

Handover deserves its own reading; see why a live process handover breaks. For a large continuous unit, preparing in-charges at industrial chemical plants shows how the moves fit. A fuller programme is set out in our guide to first-time chemical plant supervisors.

Tonight, read the shift log and ten permits. This week, write the in-charge page. Before the next promotion, ask the candidate plainly whether he wants to lead a crew or simply wants more money. Give the second kind a lead operator grade. Book the shadow spell while the old in-charge is still on the roll.