Identify your real needs for secondary containment leadership and how to support them with the right choices for your field tank operations. Choices and decisions need to be made for secondary spill containment, tank secondary containment, spill containment berms, and secondary containment systems for above ground storage tanks that are all representative of secondary containment for environmental protection. Gaining the tools and right information in order to form leadership decisions in your field can be a weighty responsibility and one that demands your attention and with the abundance of misinformation out there it may also be tedious. Leadership in your Field Operations however requires that the question be answered: “what is in this for me” as a leader?
We understand your scope-of-your-work, responsibilities, as leaders that you must give to environmental protection today, it is significantly important and often also urgent. Gaining the tools and right information in order to form leadership decisions in your field can be a weighty responsibility and one that demands your attention and with the abundance of misinformation out there it may also be tedious. We believe that you will find the support network in this article that you need to form quality leadership decisions toward environmental Secondary Containment for your field operations. You will find this approach is different in that we believe that making a difference is often more important than simply making a sale.
First lets identify your real needs for secondary containment leadership and then support them with the right product choices.
1. “Protecting Your Investment; Preserving Our Environment”. You need what may sound simplistic but really isn’t and is stated in our Manufacturing Division use for their trademark: “Protecting Your Investment; Preserving Our Environment” – a simple slogan but saying much more.
2. Confidence, Security, Assurance. Your secondary containment installation should leave you confident at the end of the day that it will provide the level of protection required. You need to know that potential spilling from the primary tank will remain secure within the bounds of the containment. And you need the assurance that you as a leader have made the wise choice best suited for your operations. In many ways assurance is most important of these three as it really defines that question we have about any product: “what’s in it for me?”.
3. Environmental Regulatory Compliance. You need to be confident that your secondary containment installation meets all of the county, state or provincial, and Federal Codes. EPA, SPCC, NFPA, OSHA, OH&S, ERCB, SEM and more. Does your secondary containment supplier have these codes considered in their product engineering? Confidence, security, & assurance in your product supplier and the product goes a long ways in answering real needs.
4. To ‘Audit-Proof’ your site. Today with so many large EPA fines and shut-downs in the news almost weekly it is critically important that you ‘audit-proof’ your site. While most of the “news” related fines are in reaction to an actual spill occurrence rather than a regional inspection, it is wise to give leadership to secondary containment in SPCC plans in a proactive way rather than to follow through after a spill occurrence. Poor leadership tends to react rather than act. This is true leadership when we can foresee potential problems and place actions in place beforehand. One of your real needs is to ‘audit-proof’ your site in a proactive way.
5. To Show Community Responsibility. More and more Producers are recognizing this need in a participatory way by actively including themselves in the local community. For many of us leaders, we must live in the same community that we work. To answer some of the community’s concerns about our operations and the environment some producers today join league with other producers in the region to give ‘town hall’ type presentations to address community questions. Our community needs to know that we as Producers are showing community responsibility. Secondary Containment does have a role to play in Showing Community Responsibility. To many local residents the sight of a Steel Containment Berm surrounding the tank speaks “confidence” and “security” more than the former days when tanks were bermed only with dirt. It gives assurance to the community that your operations are environmentally responsible in the community. (You may have noticed here the law of leadership… Only when the leaders has confidence, security, and assurance himself can he give confidence, security, and assurance to others…)
6. Ease of Construction. The ease of construction of your secondary containment system becomes important on two levels. First, in the matter of overall project cost. Second, in consideration of your local roustabout crew doing the assembly. A rule-of-thumb with any product and project is “to keep it simple”. A typical secondary containment berm should be assembled in less than a day following proper pad preparation. Aside from the visible sense of accomplishment at day’s end though is that the ease of construction reflects highly upon your leadership among even the working crews. Leaders make wise choices before construction commences. Another real need then is ease of construction.
7. To Demonstrate Financial Responsibility. As an operations leader you need to demonstrate that you have been “financially responsible” in your decisions for the Owners and Shareholders of your Production Facility. Knowing that you have gotten a ‘best price’ on the product and the ease of construction goes a long way in showing leadership in this arena. We have discovered that at many locations where indigenous soils are not available to berm tanks and must be hauled and constructed, the cost of dirt berms is often greater than that of assembled steel. Care must be taken however with choice of steel product. Some agricultural manufacturer steel products supplied for upstream petroleum secondary containment may appear lower in initial cost only to suffer in installation costs and time creating a higher project cost. There is a real need for operations leaders to demonstrate financial responsibility. We help you meet these needs.
Bristar Containment is a leader in Secondary Containment Manufacturing based in Denver CO and Wimborne AB that has addressed these real needs with products and services that give Leadership to this sector of the industry Secondary Containment. Bristar’s leadership in 15 years of serving Upstream Petroleum Operators & Producers needs has tailored solutions directly for the field and for leaders in the field. Bristar Containment Industries Ltd is the only Steel Berm Manufacturer specifically native to the Upstream Petroleum Industry. Why does this make a difference?
“The difference is in the engineering”. Bristar Steel looks different. (See: The resource box below for details.) Bristar’s design approach to secondary containment has not been adapted from agricultural backgrounds but is rooted in Professional Civil Engineering that meets specific “oilfield” parameters and codes & requirements. Being birthed out of a background of Oilfield Production Tank Fabrication and Production Measurement in 1995 Bristar employed veteran Petroleum Engineering Services to engineer a secondary containment system specific to Upstream Petroleum use. Being strict in their parameters to meet various codes, Government regulatory requirements and their own critical goals gives Bristar the confidence, security, and assurance that manufactured Secondary Containment products meet your real needs.
