The advent of the industrial revolution in the nineteenth century increased the volume and variety of manufactured goods and enriched the quality of life for society as a whole. However, industrialization was also accompanied by new manufacturing and complex processes that brought about the use of hazardous chemicals and difficult-to-control operating conditions. Moreover, human-process-equipment interaction plus on-the-job learning resulted in further undesirable outcomes and associated consequences. These problems gave rise to many catastrophic process safety incidents that resulted in thousands of fatalities and injuries, losses of property, and environmental damages. These events led eventually to the necessity for a gradual development of a new multidisciplinary field, referred to as process safety. From its inception in the early 1970s to the current state of the art, process safety has come to represent a wide array of issues, including safety culture, process safety management systems, process safety engineering, loss prevention, risk assessment, risk management, and inherently safer technology. Governments and academic/research organizations have kept pace with regulatory programs and research initiatives, respectively. Understanding how major incidents impact regulations and contribute to industrial and academic technology development provides a firm foundation to address new challenges, and to continue applying science and engineering to develop and implement programs to keep hazardous materials within containment. Here the most significant incidents in terms of their impact on regulations and the overall development of the field of process safety are described.

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Risks associated with transportation of Class 3 packing group II & III hazardous materials in transport by motor carriers were investigated. Incident data of transportation of Class 3 materials was collected from the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) database for a period of 10 years (2005–2014). The collected incident data was screened later for small quantities (≤ 8 gallons) and for single component (32,455 incidents). Root causes of the incidents (31,307 incidents) were categorized according to different transportation phases and corresponding frequencies were determined. Using the available consequence data (fatality/injury, financial damage, and quantity released) incident pyramids were prepared and later risk matrices were developed for fatality/injury, financial damage, and quantity released. Analysis found the risk of Class 3 (PG II & III) material in transportation a low consequence‐high frequency phenomenon and also revealed some key issues such as almost two‐third of the total incidents occurred during “unloading” phase of the transportation. Procedural deviation and human error were found as the two most frequently cited categories, and there was no incident resulting in fatality in these ten years. © 2018 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Process Process Saf Prog 37:376–381, 2018

Process safety starts at the conceptual phase and continues throughout the entire life cycle of an asset. From process selection to de-commissioning, various process safety elements govern the safety and reliability of the total system. Contractors play a crucial role in project execution including detailed design, technology selection, plant layout, commissioning, start-up, and further expansion, modification and maintenance activities. The interface/interaction of the contractor with the operator/owner often defines the importance of process safety throughout this life cycle. Undoubtedly, these are the most critical phases of a plant life cycle which could trigger an unexpected or uncontrolled situation leading to a catastrophic incident. This paper discusses the impact of the contractors' role during major process safety events including the Phillips explosion in Pasadena (1989), Sonat vessel failure (1998), Texas City Refinery explosion (2005), T2 Laboratories explosion (2007) and a few others. Lessons from past incidents are highlighted and an in-depth analysis is conducted to identify essential process safety components for different groups of contractors and for the different phases of projects. Different aspects of process safety functional elements are presented and discussed for both greenfield and brownfield projects. A Comprehensive understanding of process safety and risk management is required by all levels of contractors to ensure risk-based decision making and hazard mitigation. Besides the process safety expertise needed by the contractors, the necessity of having a consistent and harmonized interaction between the operators/owners and the contractors is also emphasized.

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The Oil and Gas industry has historically relied on lagging indicators (e.g., number of spill events, volume of spill, number of well kicks, personal safety statistics) for measuring and monitoring safety performance. Even though these metrics provide some useful information on an organization's safety culture, they do not offer any predictive insights. Leading indicators are metrics for measuring and monitoring events that can lead to or contribute towards an incident. Well control incidents are low frequency-high consequence events. Carefully developed and tracked leading indicators can provide valuable information for preventing significant control events. Currently, a collaborative project is underway to engage the upstream oil and gas industry to develop leading indicators-based dashboard tools for predicting and thereby preventing well control incidents. The goal of this project is to develop a set of leading indicators-driven predictive tools with customizable dashboard displays, for multiple levels of decision makers, to constantly monitor and understand well operations risk from a process safety standpoint. This tool would provide the users (from frontline to management) with role-specific information from status of engineering barriers (e.g., hydrostatic head, BOP status and health) to organizational process safety elements (e.g., procedure, compliance, design, risk management). The ‘processed’ information presented in a dashboard setting can be considered as early warning signs of well control events, which should drive targeted corrective actions to minimize risks in well operations. The project has already identified significant work in this area both from academic and industrial sectors, which will help to build the foundation for moving forward towards building a robust and useful Leading Indicators Dashboard.