Golden Rules of Process Safety

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Process Safety Management Asia 2014

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  • 72 Always be looking for hazards Safety assessments such as hazard and operability studies (HAZOPS) identify hazards and quantify their respective risk. A hidden deciency in this process can result in risks that are underestimated so that the applied Independent Protection Layers (IPLs) are inadequate. A hazard can be missed or incorrectly assessed if the team lacks key technical, operating or maintenance expertise.

    Golden Rules of SuccessfulProcess Safety ManagementImproving safety for organisations involves more than technological solutions; understanding processes and plant interactions are equallyimportant. Neglecting widely established rules can lead to a major accident, which could have easily been prevented in the rst place.Here are the 7 golden rules every engineer/manager should be aware of:

    5 Be clear. Be very clear By words, actions and examples, management and safety leaders demonstrate their expectations. Subordinates interpret this message and bias their actions and attitudes accordingly. Given the challenges of communications in large and complex organizations, a few misunderstood words or an ambiguous or conicting message may degrade the process safety attitude of employees.

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    6 Find the root cause in accident investigations Past theory and practices for accident investigations took an approach that often cited operator error as the root cause. The new theory, which takes a much wider view, will often trace the root cause to a management failure or a failure of system in which humans function. Those applying the old approach are not aware of where the true weakness in their systems exists, so similar accidents may reoccur.

    Dont let organisational change aect safety High-performance organizations of the type needed to manage high-integrity safety systems are not at a natural state; the laws of entropy apply. Organizations undergo continuous change, whether desired or not. The organization aects the other listed modes in positive and negative ways, which means it contributes to a possible accident. A seemingly subtle change in priorities, stang, training, etc. can signicantly aect process safety as it interacts with other listed modes.

    1 Establish clear data exchange protocol early onTodays typical large-scale engineering projects have major teams that interact with many organizations. As such, thousands of documents are created; information is communicated through many dierent media and quality check process is constantly challenged. Undetected errors can occur if the data exchange protocols are not well dened or managed.

    Be aware of technologys challenges New technology and new designs often create unforeseen challenges. When the industry embraced open systems, the Microsoft Operating System became a standard component in many control systems. The unforeseen risk was an ongoing urgency to install frequent software patches to correct security holes and software stability problems. This and similar are blind-spots that can degrade the system.

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    Be mindful of when to integrate humans into the process A well-designed system, organization or procedure integrates humans into processes where they are known to perform well, and it avoids or minimizes activities that humans are known to perform less reliably. If this is not the case, the expected error rate will be higher, and the resulting errors may be overt, hidden or unforeseen. Human error in any type of process or activity increases when humans are under tasked, over tasked or placed under stress.

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    Learn how to implement an optimal strategy for better resource utilisation and safer operations at Process Safety Management Asia 2014. To attend the conference, email [email protected] or call +65 6722 9388. Visit www.processsafetyasia.com for more information.

    References: Charles Perrow, Normal Accidents: Living with High-Risk Technologies New York, Basic Books Inc., 1999. I Tom Shephard and David Hansen, IEC 61511 Implementation The Execution Challenge Control magazine, May 2010. I Peter Bullemer and Doug Metzger, CCPS Process Safety Metric Review: Considerations from an ASM Perspective ASM Consortium Metrics Work Group, May 23, 2008. I Nancy Bartels, Worst Fears Realized Control Engineering magazine, September 24, 2010. I Sydney Decker, The Field Guide to Understanding Human Error, Surrey UK, Ashgate Publishing Ltd., reprint 2010.

    Adapted from Process Safety: Blind Spots and Red Flags by: Tom Shephard, CAP, PMP, Mustang Engineering, LP as Published in Hydrocarbon Processing, Copyright: Mustang Engineering