Process Safety Behaviour Change: Improving Operational Integrity Through Process Safety Fundamentals

Abstract

Abstract Process safety management aims to ensure that all physical assets are well designed, safely operated and properly maintained. Process safety management is central to achieving Shell's Goal Zero ambition of no harm and no leaks across our operations. Shell's approach to achieving this combines our asset integrity principles with our risk management approach, which is based on the "bow-tie" model. Asset integrity principles define the way we manage our facilities during their complete lifecycle. The principles combine design standards with technical and operational standards, underpinned by leadership expectations at all levels. In risk management, we identify hazards and evaluate risks and then define the barriers we need to help mitigate the possibility of process safety events occurring. These barriers are both hardware and human, accompanied by critical business processes that allow us to manage risks across our businesses. Continuous improvement in the management of hardware barriers and the robustness of human barriers is important to our overall risk management approach. Within the overall improvement trend, the number of technical integrity related events has significantly reduced. This suggests that operating integrity incidents make up an increasing fraction of process safety incidents, and, deeper process safety leadership and a different approach to behavioural change at the front line may be required to maintain improvement. Analysis of operational integrity events in Shell identified that a small set of human barriers contribute to half of the releases and it is likely that the potential for these occurrences could have been reduced by people adhering to known good operating practices. From this analysis, a set of "Process Safety Fundamentals" were derived. TheProcess Safety Fundamentals were first rolled out across our Downstream Manufacturing Business, where they have been associated with a reduction of approximately 30% in process safety events related to operational integrity. Building on the Manufacturing experience, and further incident analysis, an updated set of ten Process Safety Fundamentals are being rolled out across our businesses. Aspects of the Process Safety Fundamentals aimed at setting them up for successful application are: They provide evidence-based, clear, simple dos and don'ts, based on good operating practice.They are owned by site leadership (not the safety department) with a clear front-line focus, fully supported by line supervisors.Roll-out is through line-led, face-to-face engagement to explore what they mean at each site and its ways of working.The front line is engaged to take ownership for their part in process safety and surface potential blockers.Recognition that roll-out takes time. Quality conversations to identify dilemmas and define plans to resolve them is essential to successful implementation.Site and senior leaders continue engaging on site around the Process Safety Fundamentals. Recognising that people may normalise risk in their daily activities, the Process Safety Fundamentals are used to drive an increased focus on safety critical tasks. This paper describes the ten Process Safety Fundamentals and the roll-out, which uses Hearts and Mindsprinciples (Energy Institute, 2008), to engage the workforce and unlock process safety leadership at all levels. The Fundamentals aim to leverage the knowledge of a capable workforce, supporting them to apply known safe operating techniques.