Guidelines for integrating management systems and metrics to improve process safety performance

Abstract

An approach to help a company reduce duplication of its management efforts as it improves its process safety performance is described in the CCPS book “Guidelines for Integrating Management Systems and Metrics to Improve Process Safety,” scheduled to be published in 2015. This article provides an overview for the book, describing how a company can identify and prioritize its process safety-related risks across its separate safety, health, environmental, quality, and security groups (SHEQ&S), helping ensure that decisions made at any level in the company, whether corporate, regional, or local, do not increase its overall risk. An example showing some metrics affecting process safety performance across the SHEQ&S groups is provided to help the reader apply this approach to their organization. The Guideline addresses the risk reduction efforts and complex interaction between these groups, focusing on process safety-related metrics that cross the different SHEQ&S group boundaries. This book combines the Plan, Do, Check, Act management life cycle approach, the Bow Tie barrier analysis risk reduction approach, the Risk-Based Process Safety concepts and applies recent advances for identifying and implementing process safety-related metrics. The bottom line: A company can improve its overall process safety performance using process safety-related metrics in an integrated SHEQ&S management system. © 2014 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Process Saf Prog 34: 259–266, 2015