Improving operational discipline to prevent loss of containment incidents

Self Cite

“…in the eyes of the public the industry is one.” Trevor Kletz (b. 1922) Process safety risk reduction efforts are a part of our journey to make our chemical industry safer for people and the environment. This article focuses on our process safety risk reduction efforts, providing (1) a brief historical discussion, (2) a framework for today's current practices, and (3) a proposal for some future efforts. Process safety practices have evolved over the years and continue to evolve today as we share our new practices and theories. In addition, today's digital age continues to enhance our ability to share information across the globe, and it has accelerated the changing nature of the public's view of the chemical industry—the public's concept of acceptable societal risk. Our right to operate chemical facilities is based on several factors, including our effect on neighboring communities, the public's changing perception, and the governmental regulations created in response to major fires, explosions, and toxic releases. © 2012 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Process Saf Prog, 2012

“…Poor OD combined with an increased frequency has the same result: the overall business risk is increased. This concept has been discussed in detail elsewhere [9, 10].…”

Section: Today—our Presentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Continuing our process safety management journey

Vaughen

Kletz

2012

Self Cite

“…As Vaughen and Klein point out in a recent article regarding improving operational discipline through trend analysis from incident investigations, responses in surveys that indicate poor performance “help leadership focus on programs that will improve the weaker principles” [8]. With the perceived gaps identified, a typical SWOT analysis can be performed and action plans for improvement developed.…”

Section: Gap Analysis and Swotmentioning

confidence: 99%

How to evaluate process safety culture

Forest

2012

It may seem that organizational culture is subjective and therefore difficult to measure. This article will show that an objective approach can be taken to survey and define process safety culture. With this data, gap analysis can be performed that compares survey data to the Center for Chemical Process Safety (CCPS) essential elements of process safety. This gap analysis can be used to identify strengths and weaknesses so that process safety performance can be improved. The survey method used, employs the CCPS process safety pillars, and categorizes responses according to the pillar elements, principles, and essential features required for excellence. The appropriate data collecting technique is shown that will give statistically meaningful results. Examples are given of grouping results by safety pillar categories and demographics of the survey population. Finally, a gap analysis method is shown that compares the survey results to CCPS essential elements so that improvement plans can be made. © 2012 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Process Saf Prog, 2012

“…We note here that PHA Teams usually focus on improving administrative and engineering controls, which directly affect the Frequency and Consequence terms. Implementation and adherence to maintaining the PHA Team's recommendations, if any, is then addressed separately by ensuring that the site has effective OD in its PSM program [5].…”

Section: The Surgical Risk Reduction Approachmentioning

confidence: 99%

A surgical risk reduction approach to reduce global process safety risk: The “PSM gamma‐knife”

Vaughen

Kruger

Hauser

2012

Self Cite

Businesses with more than one site strive to minimize operational variability across their entire organization. However, uniformly implementing company‐wide standards is difficult because each site maintains its own personality—its own culture. When a business strives to reduce its global process safety risk, a significant incident that exposes a particular site's weakness may result in a simple corporate decision forcing all sites to implement the same process safety improvement. This article shares the basic concept and the novel use of a risk minimization tool, commonly used to reduce financial risks in an investment portfolio, to help decision‐makers minimize their multisite, global process safety risk without adding undue stress on the rest of the organization. This approach helps quantify each individual site's process safety risks into a global business process safety risk model, uses a Monte Carlo simulation to determine which site‐specific factors contribute the most to the overall business risk, and then helps decision‐makers prioritize and choose site‐specific risk reduction efforts that minimizes the global risk. The global process safety risk reduction model used to show how to use this approach is based on a simplified risk equation containing site‐specific terms for frequency, consequence and operational discipline. Often the most contentious term in risk estimating is the frequency, especially with significant scenarios that have never happened before and, hence, have a very low likelihood. The beauty of the Monte Carlo simulation is that the user can account for the uncertainty in the frequency by choosing a frequency probability function based on a range of possible best‐ to worst‐case consequence scenarios. From the surgical perspective, a person (the whole organization) with cancer is often adversely affected when treated with chemotherapy. The results from this approach, using the image of a “PSM Gamma Knife,” show how selective site‐specific risk reduction treatments specifically address each site's process safety risk to help reduce the overall risk without adversely affecting the health of the whole organization. © 2012 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Process Saf Prog, 2012