The importance of (process safety) leadership

Abstract

It is indeed an honour to be invited to contribute the inaugural Trevor Kletz & Sam Mannan Guest Perspective on Process Safety. Unfortunately I did not ever meet Trevor, though I worked at a plant he was a design consultant on, but I worked with Sam for several years, together focused on how we could improve process safety outcomes.For this paper I want to write about a key area in process safety that I believe underpins everything we do. If we get it really wrong, we can't come back from the brink. If we get it a little wrong, we can usually recover, with a lot of work and effort. If we get it right, things just work. So, what am I talking about, is it design, maintenance, operations? No, I am talking about leadership. This underpins everything else we do in process safety yet is an oft neglected aspect. I think this is a fitting start to this series, because both Trevor and Sam believed in effective communication, which is a key element of leadership. I hope it will set the scene for future articles to incorporate aspects of leadership when others will delve into more detailed topics.