QHSE Agency – participants’ interactions

The Quality, Health, Safety, and Environment (QHSE) Agency helps community agencies and businesses comply with quality, health, and safety standards while operating in harmony with the environment. Participants interact with the agency as they consume or produce goods and services, in a way that boosts their well-being and is environmentally sustainable.

The QHSE Agency is part of the Data Bureau, which also includes the Accounting and Data & Publishing Agencies. The three agencies are served by 24 operational presidencies, who interact with contractors and participants and implement the agencies’ policies and strategies as formulated by the executive presidencies.

Quality management

The community endeavors to establish itself as a center of excellence in the production of goods and services. It aims to have products and services that are renowned for their reliability, durability, and performance. This will no doubt lead to happier customers and more revenues for community businesses, generating prosperity for all. In addition, with such a reputation for quality, non-participants are more eager to join the community and enjoy a superior standard of living.

For the community to achieve this, it needs an aggressive approach to quality management. Quality management refers to systematic processes of assessing products and services to ensure that they meet specified minimum requirements.

Through the QHSE Agency, the community requires all businesses and agencies to meet standards that have been agreed upon by international and local standards bodies, such as the International Standards Organization (ISO). In addition, the agency facilitates the formulation of community-specific quality standards that are more attuned to the needs of the community and also requires businesses and agencies to implement them. This way, entities in the community are held to much higher quality standards and specifications than ordinary organizations, boosting their competitive edge and profitability.

Meeting standards may not always be a simple exercise. The QHSE Agency engages with participants who may be struggling to produce goods and services that are of the required standards. Through consultancy, and easing access to other agencies, the agency helps businesses conform.

The formulation and implementation of standards is a consultative process during which operational presidencies, agencies that deal with legal, risk, and compliance issues, and contractors with businesses as consultants are all involved. Business owners are also heavily involved as standards for their businesses are developed. Once this is done, the agency, in concert with the automated system and operational presidencies, implements and thereafter closely monitors adherence to guarantee quality.

Monitoring is a real-time operation, during which the system collects data from agencies, and with the help of the Data and Publishing analytical tools, assesses this information. With such a robust system in place, confidence in the community’s production is significantly boosted, as is its competitiveness.

Health and Safety

While the community makes great effort to ensure that products and services produced do not harm the welfare of participants and other consumers, it is also keen to ensure that production happens in places where safety and health are safeguarded.

The QHSE Agency formulates health and safety regulations that businesses and agencies operate within. These regulations are within established laws, such as the OSH Act and others, but they also consider the community’s unique circumstances and bylaws. A major motivator for having good regulations is to ensure they do not hinder production, but also that they do not put participants’ health and safety at risk. The agency is instrumental in helping the community strike this balance.

The agency monitors compliance with regulations in real-time. It encourages adherence to standards, but additionally, it can identify any gaps that exist and quickly move to bridge them. The agency is responsible for updating and implementing changes to regulations, including through regular, clear communication with the parties involved.

When accidents do occur, the QHSE Agency is responsible for investigating them. This brings impartiality to the investigation, and enables the focus not to be on punitive action, but on learning from the accident and therefore eliminating the likely occurrence of such accidents, while knowing how better to respond to them should they occur. Investigations are undertaken by contractors who are engaged by the agency, with payment for services depending on the circumstances at play.

Environment

The NewVistas pattern is premised on among other things, the fact that it is possible to achieve social and economic prosperity while still operating in harmony with the environment. The QHSE Agency guides agencies and businesses in achieving this ideal.

As the world panics due to phenomena such as climate change, pollution, and severe weather conditions, it is easy to introduce draconian regulations that not only fail to address the issue but fail to embrace the right solutions. Some of the approaches have outrightly led to diminished economic production, as is the case with countries that have lost industrial capacity due to a pivot to “green energy”.

The community prioritizes the use of science and evidence-based approaches as a way of striking a balance between environmental conservation and economic activity. The use of fossil fuels, which are abundant, will be present but will be consumed in a substantially different way to the way they are used now.

While there will be no intra-community vehicular traffic, connections between communities, and power generation may still depend on fossil fuels to a significant extent. The community’s focus will be to ensure that the use is highly efficient, preventing the discharge of harmful substances, and providing for straightforward sequestration of carbon.

Nuclear power will also be widely used, being exploited in large power plants that distribute power through a power grid. Every apartment will also have a fuel cell, running on natural gas. Excess power will be fed into the grid.

The carbon dioxide that will be produced when using natural gas will be fed to greenhouses, boosting the growth of crops and offering an effective avenue to sequester carbon. All other forms of carbon waste will be turned into carbon through pyrolysis. This carbon can then be sent to landfill, or used as a raw material for various manufacturing processes.

The QHSE is responsible for driving the community to realize these realities, frequently collaborating with other agencies and contractors. It also moderates the use of fuel and other interactions with the environment to ensure that people can exploit the environment to improve their livelihoods, while simultaneously safeguarding it and thereby delivering on the promise of sustainable prosperity.

Illustrations

Due to the nature of its roles, the QHSE Agency interacts extensively with participants. The 24 operational presidencies, each serving a district, are in part due to the importance of enabling participants to access all the assistance they need from the automated system and contractors to ensure they comply with various regulations and standards formulated by the agency. Here, we illustrate some examples of interactions between participants on one hand, and operational presidencies, the automated system, and contractors on the other hand.

Illustration 1

Luke’s business in the community consists of manufacturing plastics. He makes a wide range of items based on polyethylene. He has been running the business for a while now and engages contractors for various aspects of production.

To produce different types of plastics, Luke first procures naphtha, a by-product in the crude oil refinery process. He obtains the raw material from another business that extracts and refines oil in the community’s hinterlands. The naphtha is then stored in a warehouse leased by Luke for this purpose.

Luke is responsible for transporting the raw material from the source to the warehouse. He has to abide by a set of regulations that prevent spillage during transport and storage, thereby preventing environmental pollution. He is expected to transport the naphtha using the right facilities and to store it as prescribed by the agency’s regulations.

To produce plastic containers for domestic use, Luke first processes the raw material and ends up with, among other components and by-products, ethylene, propylene, benzene, and butadiene. He sells benzene, propylene, and butadiene to other businesses that use the components as raw materials for their production – including making other types of plastics, insulation materials, and clothing. In collaboration with the businesses to whom he sells the products, he is responsible for their proper transport. Benzene, for instance, is poisonous, and great care must be taken to ensure handlers are safe, and there is no leakage.

The process uses significant amounts of energy. Much of the energy is provided by a fuel cell that is installed in the factory. Additionally, Luke buys the energy from the community, through the grid. He observes regulations that call for responsible energy usage and carefully monitors the potential effects of his processes on people and the environment.

Once he has the finished product – polyethylene, Luke turns it into pellets. These pellets will later be molded through various techniques to produce a varied array of items including utensils and containers. At the same time, he sells some of the pellets to other businesses that for various reasons do not engage in the processing of naphtha, and instead, just use processed pellets to produce what they need.

Besides producing various plastic products, and the byproducts of naphtha, Luke also recycles single-use plastics. He uses the community’s infrastructure to collect the plastic waste and store it in a warehouse in one of the mirrored villages’ industrial blocks. Using pyrolysis, Luke produces pyrolysis oil and energy, produced by the breakdown of plastic polymers into smaller molecules (monomers). Pyrolysis oil has several similarities to naphtha and can be used to produce energy. Other chemical processes can be used to break down plastic and enable recycling, producing high-quality plastic once again.

Before Luke started production, the plant that he operates with the help of contractors was thoroughly inspected by a contractor engaged by the QHSE Agency, but paid by Luke. The contractor walked with Luke through the various measures that had been put in place to ensure the safety and health of those within the plant and beyond, measures to limit or eliminate the emission of harmful substances, and adherence to the community’s regulations.

Since then, the automated system has been collecting real-time data on the plant’s operations, and analyzing them to ensure compliance. From time to time, Luke is required to allow independent inspectors who use data from the automated system, as well as their own professional experience, to help him operate in line with regulations.

After an initial quality assessment, where every product that Luke presents to the market is assessed, subsequent quality analysis is done through the automated system, which regularly demands random samples, and tests them for consistency. This way, the quality assurance process is cheaper, easier, and reliable. From time to time, he may engage a contractor to help him comply with unmet quality standards.

The operational presidency who serves Luke periodically reviews information on various aspects of Luke’s operations. The automated system can also alert them when it notes that an intervention is needed. In these instances, the operational presidency gets in touch with Luke, where they discuss any issues. The operational presidency helps Luke to locate and contract professionals when needed to improve his operations as far as quality, safety, and environmental management are concerned.

Illustration 2

Walter is an experienced plant operator, having operated excavators as well as machines that crush rock, transport raw material, dig trenches, and other related activities in the mining industry. He first joined the community on contract providing his services to a limited partner who was running a mine in the hinterlands. Over time, he started and completed the process of becoming a participant.

Walter has been extensively trained on how to handle various types of equipment; to improve his expertise and to ensure he operates them safely. The QHSE Agency’s automated system regularly checks his performance and may recommend refresher courses so that he update his skills.

He operates the client’s machinery as they may agree from time to time, based on the exigencies of the tasks the client needs to accomplish. He is in the mine for two weeks every month, spending the other two weeks on the community’s physical campus.

The two weeks he spends in the community enable him to participate fully as a member of the community. During this time, he has a contract to spend three hours a day operating a forklift in the industrial blocks outside the community, helping a client load and offload trucks that bring in inventory, as well as loading for customers in other communities. The relaxed schedule also helps him bond with his family and undertake leisure activities such as basketball and fellowship with members of his church.

As he operates his business as a plant operator, Walter’s clients key in performance indicators in his portal, noting things such as how fast he can complete tasks, his ability to carry out routine maintenance on the equipment he operates, the number of times the machinery breaks down, and the frequency of accidents or near accidents. These measures and others are also noted by the QHSE automated system, helping the agency to rate the quality of his services. this rating is visible to other businesses that may be interested in hiring his services.

The mine where Walter runs his business is expected by the QHSE Agency’s regulations to observe some procedures that ensure it is safe. There are measures to prevent landslides, unsafe operating conditions that may make people like Walter more prone to accidents, and constant inspection and maintenance of all machinery used.

The QHSE Agency engages contractors who, in addition to the automated system’s data collection and analysis, perform regular inspections and audits, either on a predetermined frequency or any time the system issues a red flag. The costs of audits and inspections are paid for by the limited partner who has contracted Walter, while those on the equipment he uses, and which he has hired from the Business Operations Agency are paid for by him.

Walter also undergoes constant medical checks which ascertain his physical and mental abilities to operate in the sort of environment that he does. This medical information is usually collected and analyzed in the context of his operation helping the agency to not only establish the suitability of the operating conditions Walter is exposed to, but other contractors as well, and ultimately, what needs to be done in case Walter and others are exposed to unhealthy conditions.

The QHSE Agency is constantly evaluating data from the mine where Walter is a plant operator to ensure that mining activities are sustainable. The agency wants to ensure that there is no over-extraction, and that, once the mining activities are over, the mining operator can help nature reclaim the area that has been mined.

Walter and other businesses that operate in the mine are regularly trained on the environmental sustainability of their operations, so that, in the event the automated system or other aspects of the agency are not aware, they can alert it on a need for environmental analysis, and if need be, closure of the mine and reclamation of the land.

Walter operates the business alongside close to 500 other contractors. The limited partner who runs the mine cannot optimally manage these contracts. Therefore, he has hired some other contractor who oversee the contracts on his behalf, helping in performance reviews and issues related to their business relationships and operating conditions.