Major Hazard Industries Research Articles

Control of industrial major accident hazard regulation in Malaysia: second decade in examination

The Control of Industrial Major Accident Hazards (CIMAH) regulations was introduced in 1996 to regulate workplaces with hazardous chemicals in their facilities. The Regulations provide a minimum standard to ensure precautionary measures related to major hazard risks are taken. Although the Regulations have been enforced for more than two decades in Malaysia, there have been limited efforts to review related information, trends and data since its inception. The study aimed to provide an overview of the position of CIMAH regulations after two decades of being enacted in Malaysia. Data were extracted from the published and unpublished reports and documentations by Department of Occupational Safety and Health of Malaysia (DOSH), as well as available publications from literary journals. Analysis of the contents revealed three categories of data: i) CIMAH regulations’ administrative governance changes; ii) major hazard industries–categorization and registration trends; and iii) CIMAH regulations’ punitive activities. The findings provide an overview of relevant trends and data related to CIMAH regulations in the past two decades, and may provide stakeholders such as policymakers, practitioners, and researchers a groundwork for improvement initiatives.

Major Hazard Industries Disaster Preparedness: An Empirical Study of Liquified Petroleum Gas Storage Facilities

Major Hazard Industries Disaster Preparedness: An Empirical Study of Liquified Petroleum Gas Storage Facilities

Major hazard industries disaster preparedness: an empirical study of liquefied petroleum gas storage facilities

Liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) storage facilities storing more than 50 tonnes of LPG are classified as major hazard installations (MHIs). This industry involves highly flammable hydrocarbon chemicals that can cause destruction of property and endanger human lives. This study aims to investigate the level of disaster preparedness among 23 LPG storage facilities in Malaysia. The preparedness performance of the facilities was assessed through a five-point instrument measure in six preparedness domains. For overall preparedness, 60% of LPG facilities were rated poor or weak, and remaining 40% were rated as good or satisfactory. This indicates a serious gap in the overall current capacity of the majority of facilities to respond to major hazard disasters. Across all facilities, 'risk assessment' was the best performance domain, while the worst was 'emergency exercise'. The findings provide an overview of the level of preparedness that can guide areas of improvement among LPG facilities in Malaysia.

Process Safety Management Quality in Industrial Corporation for Sustainable Development

In recent years, also in connection with Covid-19 pandemics and enforced restrictions, there has been the formation of large industrial corporations gathering separate companies with similar, sometimes complementary production profiles. This evolving trend has brought usually positive economic effects; however, it has also created some integration problems that include the process safety management. The Texas City BP accident in 2005 and its tremendous human and economic losses underlined the obstacles in defining a well-structured corporation process safety management. The main causes of the above-mentioned accident were connected to an inadequate safety culture at the managerial level. Strong leadership and high standards of corporate governance are required to inspire correct safety behavior in the staff. The so-called soft skills become even more important in the Industry 4.0 arena, where the foundation of the whole system is based on an intelligent use and interpretation of data. The importance of this aspect is confirmed by several post-accidental analyses of past events. Although some research on this topic has been already done, it is worth it to dedicate some effort to identifying specific factors which influence the corporate process safety management quality, and, once identified, to assess them. This paper applies the concept of “lessons learnt” for the identification of organizational and managerial aspects worth consideration in process safety management. Based on accident and literature reviews and expert opinions, the aim is to identify the major contributing factors among leadership and safety culture, risk awareness, knowledge and competence, communication, and information and decision-making processes. To self-assess the level of commitment of the top leaders in process safety management, a checklist approach is proposed, combined with a quantitative, weighted evaluation based on the Relative Efficiency Indicator (REI). Positive value of REI may ensure the effectiveness of process safety management in major hazard industries and their appropriate adaptation to the corporation community. The proposed method, which is validated in an actual case study, underlines the importance of an appropriate education, and of a more careful selection of HSE managers.

Human Factors Modelling Approach: Application to a Safety Device Supporting Crane Operations in Major Hazard Industries

The European Directive on Safety and Health at Work and the following normatives have the scope to provide high levels of health and safety at work, based on some general principles managing activities and including the risk assessment to continuously improve processes and workplaces. However, the working area changes and brings new risks and challenges for workers. Several of them are associated with new technologies, which determine complex human–machine interactions, leading to an increased mental and emotional strain. To reduce these emerging risks, their understanding and assessment are important. Although great efforts have already been made, there is still a lack of conceptual frameworks for analytically assessing human–machine interaction. This paper proposes a systematic approach that, beyond including the classification in domains to explain the complexity of the human–machine interaction, accounts for the information processing of the human brain. Its validation is shown in a major accident hazard industry where a smart safety device supporting crane related operations is used. The investigation is based on the construction of a questionnaire for the collection of answers about the feeling of crane operators when using the device and the evaluation of the Cronbach’s alpha to measure of the reliability of the assessment.

Development of risk acceptance criteria in the Indian context

There is a vital need for India to adopt risk acceptance criteria (RAC) relating to major hazard industries as it attempts to transform into a major global economy over the coming decades. The present work develops a generalized methodology for establishing RAC, and demonstrates its application in the Indian context. Risk levels from a wide range of natural and technological hazards faced by Indian people is analysed vis-à-vis those of select developed and other emerging economies. It is argued that despite the divergence of key risk metrics and socio-economic parameters – per capita GDP, average wage, value of statistical life, and the degree of risk aversion – between India and representative developed economies, it is viable to align the prospective RACs for India with best global guidelines. Based on the ALARP principle, for employees and the public, the intolerable individual risk levels are projected to be 10−3 and 10-4/year respectively, while the broadly acceptable level for both is proposed to be 10-6/year. For the societal RAC, the slope of the benchmark F–N curve is fixed at -1.0, while for a maximum of 10 human fatalities the anchor intolerable and acceptable frequency points are suggested to be 10−3/year and 10-5/year, respectively. It is hoped that these benchmarks would help regulatory intensification, and a strategic mitigation of both technological and natural hazards encountered in India.

Repeated assessment of process safety culture in major hazard industries in the Rotterdam region (Netherlands)

In 2018, safety culture assessments were carried out in the Rotterdam region in nineteen major hazard companies. Four industrial sectors were involved: refineries, (petro) chemical industry, bulk storage, and chemical warehousing and logistics. Fourteen companies had participated in a similar evaluation in 2012. The assessment methodology developed in 2012 was both pragmatic (with a focus on fourteen dimensions) and normative (using a scale of 1–5 for safety culture maturity). A score of 3.0 was regarded as the minimum acceptable score for major hazards companies. The safety culture maturity scores compiled in this study allowed benchmarking of the safety cultures among the companies and sectors. The refineries had the highest ratings. In two chemical warehousing and logistics companies the safety culture maturity was below acceptable. Strengths and weaknesses of safety culture were identified at company and sector levels, and each company recognized and acknowledged the outcomes. The consistency in safety culture levels was shown to be an important factor, inconsistency blurring the borders between predefined levels of safety culture.The study is the first to present results of repeated safety culture maturity assessments. Comparing the 2012 and 2018 results in fourteen companies showed that consistently good or excellent scores in 2012 were a good predictor for an adequate safety culture six years later. The results showed that it is possible to improve the safety culture in six years from below acceptable (2.5) to good (4.0). However, no evidence was found for the ‘maturing process’ suggested in the theory. The interventions that were likely to have contributed to improvements in safety culture were education and training, launching a safety culture improvement program, realizing concrete safety improvements, and strengthening the involvement of the personnel.

Ranking of process safety cultures for risk-based inspections using indicative safety culture assessments

Although major hazard industries have no legal obligations to demonstrate a good safety culture, it is an increasingly important factor for risk-based inspections. This paper describes the development and evaluation of a relatively simple method for external indicative assessment of the process safety culture in major hazard industries. As a first step, a tool was developed. Second, the tool was successfully tested in a workshop with major hazard inspectors. After this ‘proof of concept’ and a few adaptations to improve the tool, quantitative evaluation and validation were carried out with a representative sample of major hazard inspectors in the Netherlands. In this stage, the tool comprised 30 questions, of which 19 sufficiently frequent valid responses were given for the validity test. The evaluations demonstrate that without specific preparations, inspection teams can use the tool to discriminate between plants with poor or good safety cultures. That is sufficient for ranking as additional input for risk-based inspection strategies. The resulting indicative ‘scores’ for safety culture correlate meaningfully with the quality of process safety management systems and the number of (legal) non-compliances, which were identified by the inspection team at the same occasion. The use of the tool can be further improved by training inspectors, making minor adaptations of the inspection process, and broadening the scope of a few questions. It is expected that external assessments of safety culture will become increasingly important not only for inspectorates, but also for a range of other external stakeholders.

Ageing Assessment and Management at Major-Hazard Industries

As a consequence of the obligations of the Directive Seveso III, there is a need of methods and tools that support industrial managers and the auditors, respectively, to manage and to verify the ageing status of critical equipment. Risk-Based Inspection methods (RBI) are usually used, as well as some other recommended practices (ASME, API or RIMAP). Criticalities are associated with RBI methods as these were born to optimise inspections’ costs by comparing them with safety levels, thus an effort is always necessary to adapt the method in order to manage ageing. This work describes an under-development system that supports industrial managers and auditors in controlling and managing ageing. It can be considered as a virtual sensor, made up by hardware and software. It collects information about process variables (recorded by control systems), external variables, inspection information and other data, then it processes collected information and predicts the numeric value of a performance indicator based on the approach for the ageing assessment, which was developed by an Italian working group on ageing. Based on such an indicator the prediction of the ageing state of the equipment is possible as well as its management based on the levels of industrial risk acceptance. The software is a dynamic model indicating factors that accelerate and those that slow down the degradation processes. The model is expected to build a “digital twin” of a complex plant by using a huge amount of data, which is valuable to understand how the plant will age in the next future.

Internal Auditing of Process Safety

This paper covers the major highlights from a revised member report from the European Process Safety Centre (EPSC) on the topic published in 2012 which included the results of a survey of member practice on process safety auditing as well as drawing on personal accounts on its critical success factors. During the course of 2014 further research was conducted on the related topic of internal auditing of process safety. The scope of the work included a literature review of the state of the practice with respect to the audit of process safety across the major hazard industries. In addition an online survey was conducted on current policies, standards and work practices associated with the internal audit of process safety. Finally survey respondents were invited to assess the commonly voiced barriers to successful auditing as well as propose areas for future research.

Real‐time risk assessment and decision support

Managers and operators of major hazard facilities make complex decisions as a part of their daily work activity. These decisions are made against the background potential for a major accident. Such decisions may be required to account for daily changes in a large number of factors including plant condition and performance, operational status, knowledge and experience of personnel, interactions with other activities, and the effectiveness of processes. The information involved in the decision comes from multiple sources and may be difficult to assess. Technical risk assessments provide a useful picture of major accident risk but some widely accepted approaches suffer from some significant problems which limit their value as tools for operational decision making. The article describes investigations into an approach that addresses how these difficulties may be addressed in day‐to‐day assessments. It describes a method and tool in which risks can be monitored in real‐time and so enable safer decision making. The method is applicable to the assessment of a wide range of major accident hazard scenarios. The article will describe how the tool addresses problems in some alternative approaches. A significant feature of the approach is its ability to identify the most probable causes of risk. The speed of the assessment points to its potential use in real‐time detection and control systems. The method employs a Bayesian net to perform the risk assessment. Bayesian nets have been used to aid decision making in many different situations and industries, but have received relatively little attention as risk assessment and decision tools in major hazard industries. The article will include a description of the benefits offered by this technology as well as a view of its limitations. © 2014 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Process Saf Prog 34: 183–190, 2015

RANDAP: An integrated framework for reliability analysis of detailed action plans of combined automatic-operator emergency response taking into account control room operator errors

Automatic process control and control room operators supervision/intervention in an emergency are of critical importance in major hazard industries. These combined operator and automatic actions are defined in Detailed Action Plans (DAP). A framework has been proposed for analyzing the reliability, and hence the likelihood of success, of DAPs. The Reliability Block Diagram technique is utilized for modeling the reliability of integrated automatic-operator emergency actions. The focus is on incorporating operator's operational and cognitive errors in the process/equipment reliability analysis. For this purpose, the human reliability analysis method SPAR-H is utilized. The proposed framework was used for analyzing emergency response DAPs of a real process plant in order to check and improve its applicability. It is argued that the presented framework facilitates the DAP assessment process by performing Task Analysis, modeling the detailed tasks as well as reliability analysis, thereby uncovering the shortcomings of the designed DAPs. Besides, it provides a very effective, transparent tool with insight into improvement areas and directions for improving the reliability of DAPs.

An evaluation of the effects on safety of using safety standards in major hazard industries

To protect people from hazards it is common to use safety standards. There is a general understanding in the literature that such standards will contribute to improved safety. In this paper we discuss this issue when several safety measures are present and safety standards apply to a subset of these alternatives. We show that the use of safety standards does not always give the expected effect on safety, as the implementation of safety standards for some measures can reduce investments in safety measures not affected by the standards. If the restrictions are sufficiently strong, the safety standards may lead to a reduction in overall safety. Our starting point focuses on major hazard industries, but our discussion is to a large extent general and could also be applied in other areas.

Shift Handover After Buncefield

Post Piper Alpha, failures in shift communication, including shift handover, continue to be a significant contributor to industrial major accidents worldwide and are now increasingly recognised as critical in other domains such as patient safety. This paper uses the Buncefield oil storage depot explosion and fires as an exemplar incident, briefly reviews the current state of knowledge on handover against on and offshore major hazard sector needs and compares the two sectors’ needs. The review concludes that there has been little new original research on handover, although there has been some application to new domains such as patient safety. Going forward, the paper identifies the main gap for the on and offshore major hazard industries as being the application of existing knowledge about good practice in handover, and not in the underlying research. There is also an over-focus on shift-to-shift handover specifically and not on wider - but equally critical – within-shift and shift/days or shift/management communication issues. Finally, recommendations are made for the way forward for both the on and offshore sectors.

“Go out and lead”: Process safety management

AbstractThis article shares the UK experience of risk control for major hazards and emphasizes the key role corporate governance and leadership play in the management of major hazard risks. The article outlines the joint work undertaken between industry and the Health and Safety Executive in promoting and developing both the concept and the practical application of process safety management and leadership for senior executives within major hazard industries. An accredited training course in process safety leadership and management has been launched which provides—for the first time—competence‐based training for senior executives in major hazard industries. © 2012 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Process Saf Prog, 2012.

Health and safety managers: a user's guide

CEOs and line managers are keenly aware of the importance of effective health and safety management in major hazard industries such as oil and gas and their moral and legal accountability for health and safety at work. This speaker presents a “users guide” to leaders describing how to select, scope, direct and monitor the health and safety function in order to ensure the “health” of the health and safety function, ensure risks are effectively identified and prioritised, monitor implementation and progress and ensure events and trends are appropriately flagged and actioned. The speaker seeks to provide leaders with a self check capability to ensure obligations are discharged.

Two-dimensional fuzzy fault tree analysis for chlorine release from a chlor-alkali industry using expert elicitation

The hazards associated with major accident hazard (MAH) industries are fire, explosion and toxic gas releases. Of these, toxic gas release is the worst as it has the potential to cause extensive fatalities. Qualitative and quantitative hazard analyses are essential for the identification and quantification of these hazards related to chemical industries. Fault tree analysis (FTA) is an established technique in hazard identification. This technique has the advantage of being both qualitative and quantitative, if the probabilities and frequencies of the basic events are known. This paper outlines the estimation of the probability of release of chlorine from storage and filling facility of chlor-alkali industry using FTA. An attempt has also been made to arrive at the probability of chlorine release using expert elicitation and proven fuzzy logic technique for Indian conditions. Sensitivity analysis has been done to evaluate the percentage contribution of each basic event that could lead to chlorine release. Two-dimensional fuzzy fault tree analysis (TDFFTA) has been proposed for balancing the hesitation factor involved in expert elicitation.

Building Safety indicators: Part 2 – Application, practices and results

Petroleum exploration and production in the Barents Sea is a controversial topic. The Goliat field outside the northern coast of Norway will be the first offshore oil development in this region, with planned production start in 2013–2014. Avoiding major accidents at Goliat is critical; not only to reduce the risks to human lives and the environment, but also to gain political acceptance. Providing early warnings of major accidents for Goliat is one of the main objectives of the research project ‘Building Safety’. The objective of this paper is to describe the development of early warnings in the form of indicators. In addition, the paper includes an overview of current status of early warnings of accidents in other major hazard industries; the nuclear power industry, the chemical process industry, and aviation. Experiences from these industries, including lessons learned from recent major accidents, have been used as important input to the development of early warning indicators.

A Comparative Study on Safety and Security Management Systems in Industries

Problem statement: To understand and appreciate the safety and security management systems in industries with a view to find out critical areas requiring attention so as to enhance the effectiveness of safety management systems and security management systems in large, medium and small scale industries. Approach: The study was restricted to Large, Medium and Small scale industries located in Tamilnadu, Kerala, Pondycherry, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh states of India. The data have been randomly collected from 45 samples each from Large, Medium and Small scale industries. This study has taken into the account of 6 major elements namely management commitment, documentation, facilities, promotion, procedure and training and each major elements having 6 sub elements thus consisting of 36 sub elements of safety management systems and 36 sub elements of security management systems. The sub-elements are prepared such as to reflect the availability of the safety and security management system in industries. Results: Major accident hazard industries require more attention towards safety and security management systems. The safety management system has gained more prevalence than security management system in large scale industries than the medium and small scale industries. The safety management system has considerable prevalence than security management system in medium scale industries than the small scale industries. The safety and security management system have more or less the same prevalence in the small scale industries. Conclusion: All the industries should devise systems for the adoption and implementation of safety and security management system. Security failures can lead to safety failures and hence they must be given equal importance. The major accident hazard industries should adopt all the safety and security management elements. All the elements of safety and security management systems should be given equal importance for effective and safe functioning of the industries. The security management system is an upcoming field which needs to be sincerely implemented in the industries in the present scenario of global terrorism. The safety and security management system should go together in a coherent manner to reduce the societal risk.

Quantifying the influence of safety management on the reliability of safety barriers

A methodology is described that enables to use safety management audit assessments and safety culture questionnaire results for estimating the reductions in the reliability of safety barriers in major hazard plants. The critical issue is the establishment of weight factors in combination with the anchoring of “good” safety management. A method is proposed to derive weight factors from statistical accident analysis in combination with a statistical analysis of safety management assessments at a representative sample of major hazard industries. A preliminary set of weight factors is presented with some examples of resulting reductions in reliability—this demonstration confirms that the set of weight factors needs further development.