In Houston, severe weather can impact operations any time of year, not just hurricane season, so now is the time to incorporate any fresh lessons learned during Hurricane Beryl into your plans. Photo via Getty Images

Unprecedented severe weather events are becoming more frequent and intense. Proactive business planning is critical to navigating what Mother Nature has in store for us.

In Houston, severe weather can impact operations any time of year, not just hurricane season, so now is the time to incorporate any fresh lessons learned during Hurricane Beryl into your plans. Employers are responsible for safeguarding their employees and assets during these emergencies, which requires establishing an emergency action plan as a foundation of preparedness.

Develop an Emergency Action Plan

If your business does not have an emergency action plan (EAP), today is the perfect time to start it so you are prepared with a response strategy. This clearly written plan is a blueprint for how your business will react and protect employees when severe weather strikes. The more detailed the EAP, the better you and your employees will respond in a time of crisis. Within the EAP, it is important to outline specific protocols, designate key roles and responsibilities and establish communication channels for employees and clients. As power can be an issue during severe weather events, outlining various communication channels is helpful.

Identify Key Employees

During an emergency, you need to know who has the authority to make the decisions that impact your employees and your business. The designated person needs to assess the situation, determine whether employees should work remotely or shelter in place, and communicate these decisions clearly and quickly. This person is usually on the leadership team and can be trusted to make clear decisions, act promptly and communicate effectively to mitigate undue risks.

Implement Regular Emergency Training

Practice makes perfect. A plan on paper is the first step, but it must be practiced and drilled so everyone knows what to do, asks questions and makes any needed adjustments, all when the stakes are not as high. Familiarity with emergency procedures through periodic training and drills allows employees to practice evacuation routes, assembly points and safety protocols.Incorporating local emergency responders in safety drills familiarizes employees with the roles and responsibilities of each group. Through this emergency training, your teams will become confidently prepared to calmly respond to emergencies.

Provide a Swift and Orderly Response

Proactively thinking through and planning for location-specific emergency situations allows business owners to mitigate risks associated with severe weather events and quickly respond when a crisis strikes. When your business is prepared, there is less downtime and disruption to business operations, it protects physical assets, and most importantly, it prioritizes the safety and well-being of employees.

Houston experiences a wild mix of severe weather situations, which makes proactive business planning and preparedness even more critical. Prioritizing EAP development and implementation, designating responsible decision-makers, conducting regular training and drills, and ensuring clear communication channels sets the stage for a resilient organization in severe weather. Additionally, establishing a clear EAP helps foster a culture of safety and readiness that can significantly protect lives and livelihoods during times of crisis.

———

Ray Brock is a director of safety services with Insperity, a leading provider of human resources offering the most comprehensive suite of scalable HR solutions available in the marketplace.

This article originally ran on EnergyCapital.

Ad Placement 300x100
Ad Placement 300x600

CultureMap Emails are Awesome

Houston team develops low-cost device to treat infants with life-threatening birth defect

infant innovation

A team of engineers and pediatric surgeons led by Rice University’s Rice360 Institute for Global Health Technologies has developed a cost-effective treatment for infants born with gastroschisis, a congenital condition in which intestines and other organs are developed outside of the body.

The condition can be life-threatening in economically disadvantaged regions without access to equipment.

The Rice-developed device, known as SimpleSilo, is “simple, low-cost and locally manufacturable,” according to the university. It consists of a saline bag, oxygen tubing and a commercially available heat sealer, while mimicking the function of commercial silo bags, which are used in high-income countries to protect exposed organs and gently return them into the abdominal cavity gradually.

Generally, a single-use bag can cost between $200 and $300. The alternatives that exist lack structure and require surgical sewing. This is where the SimpleSilo comes in.

“We focused on keeping the design as simple and functional as possible, while still being affordable,” Vanshika Jhonsa said in a news release. “Our hope is that health care providers around the world can adapt the SimpleSilo to their local supplies and specific needs.”

The study was published in the Journal of Pediatric Surgery, and Jhonsa, its first author, also won the 2023 American Pediatric Surgical Association Innovation Award for the project. She is a recent Rice alumna and is currently a medical student at UTHealth Houston.

Bindi Naik-Mathuria, a pediatric surgeon at UTMB Health, served as the corresponding author of the study. Rice undergraduates Shreya Jindal and Shriya Shah, along with Mary Seifu Tirfie, a current Rice360 Global Health Fellow, also worked on the project.

In laboratory tests, the device demonstrated a fluid leakage rate of just 0.02 milliliters per hour, which is comparable to commercial silo bags, and it withstood repeated disinfection while maintaining its structure. In a simulated in vitro test using cow intestines and a mock abdominal wall, SimpleSilo achieved a 50 percent reduction of the intestines into the simulated cavity over three days, also matching the performance of commercial silo bags. The team plans to conduct a formal clinical trial in East Africa.

“Gastroschisis has one of the biggest survival gaps from high-resource settings to low-resource settings, but it doesn’t have to be this way,” Meaghan Bond, lecturer and senior design engineer at Rice360, added in the news release. “We believe the SimpleSilo can help close the survival gap by making treatment accessible and affordable, even in resource-limited settings.”

Oxy's $1.3B Texas carbon capture facility on track to​ launch this year

gearing up

Houston-based Occidental Petroleum is gearing up to start removing CO2 from the atmosphere at its $1.3 billion direct air capture (DAC) project in the Midland-Odessa area.

Vicki Hollub, president and CEO of Occidental, said during the company’s recent second-quarter earnings call that the Stratos project — being developed by carbon capture and sequestration subsidiary 1PointFive — is on track to begin capturing CO2 later this year.

“We are immensely proud of the achievements to date and the exceptional record of safety performance as we advance towards commercial startup,” Hollub said of Stratos.

Carbon dioxide captured by Stratos will be stored underground or be used for enhanced oil recovery.

Oxy says Stratos is the world’s largest DAC facility. It’s designed to pull 500,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide from the air and either store it underground or use it for enhanced oil recovery. Enhanced oil recovery extracts oil from unproductive reservoirs.

Most of the carbon credits that’ll be generated by Stratos through 2030 have already been sold to organizations such as Airbus, AT&T, All Nippon Airways, Amazon, the Houston Astros, the Houston Texans, JPMorgan, Microsoft, Palo Alto Networks and TD Bank.

The infrastructure business of investment manager BlackRock has pumped $550 million into Stratos through a joint venture with 1PointFive.

As it gears up to kick off operations at Stratos, Occidental is also in talks with XRG, the energy investment arm of the United Arab Emirates-owned Abu Dhabi National Oil Co., to form a joint venture for the development of a DAC facility in South Texas. Occidental has been awarded up to $650 million from the U.S. Department of Energy to build the South Texas DAC hub.

The South Texas project, to be located on the storied King Ranch, will be close to industrial facilities and energy infrastructure along the Gulf Coast. Initially, the roughly 165-square-mile site is expected to capture 500,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year, with the potential to store up to 3 billion metric tons of CO2 per year.

“We believe that carbon capture and DAC, in particular, will be instrumental in shaping the future energy landscape,” Hollub said.

---

This article originally appeared on our sister site, EnergyCapitalHTX.com.