Extreme Makeover: Food Safety Edition

Article By JILL STUBER AND TIA GLAVE Published September October 2023
Article Source: Extreme Makeover: Food Safety Edition - Quality Assurance & Food Safety (qualityassurancemag.com)

Food safety culture makes construction and renovation projects in food facilities as easy (and safe) as HGTV.

Home renovation television channels like HGTV and the Magnolia Network make it look so easy to transform a home from drab to fab in as little as 30 minutes. Even if there’s a hiccup with paint colors, plumbing or the foundation, the host easily decides what to fix and how to work within the budget. Everyone dances with glee and sheds tears of happiness as their new home is revealed to be more stunning than they ever imagined.

Easy peasy, or so we’re led to believe.

Most renovations or new builds on television shows have positive outcomes, but the audience doesn’t see all the challenges behind the scenes. It’s been reported that home renovation shows often set unrealistic expectations for homeowners. And at times, the show producers aren’t able to deliver the dream home that homeowners had been promised.

In the food industry, we know both sides of that story. We hear of many projects that have gone well, as those are often featured in industry publications. Yet we’ve also heard of construction projects in the food industry that have been full of heartbreak — even leading to foodborne illness and death.

In a recent conversation with Dr. John Butts, founder of Food Safety by Design, he reminded us of one of the first reported heartbreaks — the Sara Lee outbreak of 1998. This outbreak was linked to at least 20 deaths and six miscarriages and seriously sickened at least 100 others. It prompted Sara Lee to initially recall 15 million pounds of meat in December 1998, although the USDA reported the recall eventually grew to 35 million pounds. The culprit was an air handling unit that was cut into pieces for removal during a construction project, which led to contaminated production areas.

Sara Lee was a wake-up call for the industry for much-needed improvements in how construction projects were approached and handled. Since 2000, American Meat Institute (now North American Meat Institute, or NAMI) has hosted the Listeria Workshop several times per year to focus on risk assessment, teamwork and technical process controls to guide industry professionals.

In the spirit of continuous improvement, the industry has continued to create additional technical guidance around hygienic building and equipment design over the past few decades. Google finds over 30 million results for “hygienic design food,” indicating it’s been top of mind for those in the industry.

The bottom line: Success in construction to minimize food safety incidents is driven by organizational culture.

Even with all these additional tools, Engineering, Automation and Design (EAD), a leading engineering, automation, project and construction management business and operations consulting services firm that has completed more than 10,000 projects at facilities in the food, life sciences and parcel/logistics industries, said that completing a construction project at an operating food processing plant is still a “complicated and detailed task.”

And while the industry is “more cognizant of the potential negative impact of construction and renovation activities while running production compared to years ago,” according to Dr. Amy Parks, director of FSQA innovations and regulatory compliance at Dole Fresh Vegetables, projects continue to face many challenges — from initial planning to risk identification to communication — all contributing to higher costs and longer-than-expected timelines. The key piece that’s often lacking in construction projects that leads to these challenges is true teamwork and collaboration for completing robust risk assessments, according to Butts.

As we talked with five industry professionals who’ve led and been part of construction projects (EAD, Butts, Parks, Darin Zehr and Rosalind Zils), they identified several key approaches critical to construction project safety, from implementing temporary barriers to increasing environmental monitoring to developing detailed start-up plans. Each spoke about attitudes, trust and respect among the members of a construction project team that make it possible to push projects across the finish line.

The bottom line: Success in construction to minimize food safety incidents is driven by organizational culture. Here are the five key takeaways so everyone feels like an HGTV star when doing construction projects:

1. Recognizing project success starts with taking care of people.

In an organization with a people-centric culture, the organization knows alignment of workload and expectations demonstrates respect for team members. During many construction projects, duties around construction tend to fall on current team members, creating an imbalance in workload, energy and attention to detail. While the culture of some organizations champions phrases like “the best way to get work done is to give it to the busiest person,” for construction project demands, that isn’t the best approach.

Zehr, general manager of Commercial Food Sanitation, recommended having the team consider “if each team member has enough capacity to provide proper oversight of the new project while doing their ongoing job. If the demand is too high, look to supplement from elsewhere in the organization or get outside support. This will assure success for both the new project and normal operation without increasing food safety risk.”

“Failing to plan is planning to fail.” — Benjamin Franklin

2. Recognizing success takes a village.

A crew of experts representing the organization’s diverse functions must be assembled to navigate every move and make every decision. Everyone must be clear on their contribution and expectations to make the project successful, as every decision can lead to cascading effects.

Our experts couldn’t stress enough how important it is to have documented construction plans, commercialization start-up plans and food safety construction plans that identify objectives, assumptions, risks, dates, activities, roles and responsibilities in place before breaking ground. Parks stated the best action plans she’s seen include a “cross-functional approach with engineering, food safety, maintenance and operations that is engaged early in the process” to include all perspectives.

Everyone is anxious about the budget and being on time so production can start. However, to minimize safety issues or food safety contamination, a comprehensive “food safety construction plan that outlines cross-functional responsibilities and expectations to ensure proper management of construction and maintenance activities as well as verification of sanitary conditions before the resumption of operations” is essential, according to Zehr.

EAD shared, “Our clients are investing millions of dollars into their facilities to expand or renovate, so it’s important to them that they have a good plan in place for ensuring food or product safety before construction begins.”

Thus, a construction project that includes representatives from each function from the pre-planning through post-mortem will benefit greatly. As Benjamin Franklin’s famous quote reminds us, “Failing to plan is planning to fail.”

3. Recognizing success needs safe spaces for all voices to be heard.

One or more functional voices being missed at any step of the project could mean disaster for a construction project. Butts recommended walking through each detailed step of the entire construction process using a risk assessment lens where each function is actively participating. Since food safety teams are already familiar with risk assessment tools, this can be a simple, proactive way to identify chemical, physical, microbiological and safety hazards when used correctly.

Butts further emphasized “consensus, or at a minimum, agreement on actions to take if control is lost at each potential risk is necessary. Planned corrective action is a part of the Construction Process Control Plan.”

We all know you can never be overprepared for unknown circumstances. In fact, being underprepared or not having everyone involved in the action plan can lead to missed steps, which may result in a delayed timeline or, worse, an outbreak, according to Parks. Creating safe spaces reduces those possibilities from occurring.

4. Recognizing success requires transparency and communication.

Curiosity, disruption and uncertainty surround construction projects; everyone feels this energy.

“A well-run project will include daily meetings with the entire contractor team to review both food safety and personal safety expectations for the facility,” noted Rosalind Zils, senior director of quality and food safety at 8th Avenue Food & Provisions.

Parks added, “Have a designated representative from each team that is responsible for the communication outside the meetings to prevent everyone from thinking someone is communicating, then no one does.”

Furthermore, EAD recommended “conducting shift overlap meetings to ensure smooth coordination and communication between shifts. These meetings ensure that all progress and any changes to the plan are effectively communicated from shift to shift.”

However, even the best-laid plans can go awry, so Butts advised to “be transparent in what happens if a control point or step is missed” to minimize confusion on next steps, as there’s no need for people to be surprised when additional time is needed for corrective action.

5. Recognizing success means when we care about people, we hold them accountable.

As with any plan, the devil is in the details, which also applies to construction projects. There are often additional steps, checks and processes such as intensified sanitation activities, increased or different PPE needs at different plant areas, new traffic patterns to adhere to and EMP monitoring that need to be completed, said Parks.

Going one step further, Zils added, “If a way to break a rule can be found, it will happen,” even if unintentionally. She advised that “plant employees at all levels be notified of construction projects and empowered to correct infractions, as well as report those [infractions] to plant leadership. Plant leaders must increase the frequency of their daily walkthroughs and be visible in their interactions and corrections of issues with contractors.”

Each expert stressed the importance of following rules and expectations, which keeps people safe.

Through the years, EAD reported it has seen companies take on a more integrated design approach for ensuring collaboration and input from the construction team earlier in the process. That’s great news, because when we play back the project like an HGTV feature, we want it filled with highlights that showcase how people are valued, how planning is proactive and how that all came together for a successful construction project. It’s apparent collaboration and coordination efforts from front-line workers to external contractors are shifting as the industry views construction projects through the lens of food safety and recognizes the value culture contributes to success.

As Butts reminded us, “Prevention is the critical path. We do not have the ability to immediately measure a food safety hazard as it is happening.”