Process safety – learning the hard way

Abstract

Did you hear about the leak at the gas plant last week in Tasmania? What about the high potential incident from the dropped object at the chemical plant in Queensland? What about the fuel depot that went up in flames in Victoria? And what about the tragic scaffolding accident in New South Wales? What do you mean you don’t have time and that you have a meeting to go to….? Learnings are everywhere, as is the pressure of business and operational expectations to have continued sharing of lessons learnt. When do you have the time, let alone your teams and operations have the time, to appreciate the lessons? We do many great things to manage hazards and solve others’ problems, yet how can we ensure that the lessons are actually being learnt? This paper shares the 25 years’ experience from a Process Safety Professional, highlighting learning successes and failures from operations and projects executed around the world as well as from direct teaching experiences concering the fundamentals of process safety. It touches on the responsibilities we all have as process safety professionals and what we can do to enhance learning opportunities for both engineering and non-engineering audiences alike.