Process Safety Management Research Articles

Veszélyes üzemek folyamatbiztonságának kockázatalapú irányítása és annak lehetőségei 1.

A szerző kétrészes publikációjában az Amerikai Vegyészmérnök Intézet Vegyi Folyamatok Biztonsági Központja által kidolgozott különböző technológiai folyamatok kockázatalapú biztonsági irányításának lehetőségeit kívánja bemutatni. A magyar katasztrófavédelmi törvény meghatározó elemei az iparbiztonsági szempontból veszélyes üzemek biztonsági irányítási rendszereivel szemben támasztott előírások. A szerző által ismertetett eljárás elemei több, Magyarországon működő veszélyes anyagokkal foglalkozó vállalat által használtak, azonban jogszabályi szinten nem jelenik meg hazánkban ilyen összetett követelményrendszer. Az első cikkben a kockázatalapú folyamatbiztonság elvének általános bemutatása után a technológiai rendszerekre vonatkozó információk meglétének, valamint a változások nyomon követésének fontosságáról, az eszközök minőségének és megbízhatóságának biztosításával kapcsolatos kérdéseiről olvashatunk.

ОЦІНКА ВПЛИВУ ЛЮДСЬКОГО ЕЛЕМЕНТУ НА БЕЗПЕКУ МОРСЬКОГО СУДНОПЛАВСТВА

The article is devoted to the study of safety management processes in maritime transport based on the use of international standards of the ISO 31000 series on risk management. The concept of acceptable risk is accepted as a theoretical basis of research, necessity of formation of which is caused by impossibility of creation of absolutely safe processes and faultless equipment and systems. The magnitude of acceptable riskmust combine the technical, economic and social aspects of shipping. In practice, this is always a compromise between the current level of security and the possibility of improving it by various methods. Further risk reduction makes the activity itself economically impractical and forces the owner to abandon such processes. In the analysis of the risks of accidents during the implementation of maritime shipping processes, it is proposed to identify four key factors: the human element, technical, technological and external. The probability of a security incident is calculated as the sum of sets of expert values of thesefactors on their weight. The weight of the factors is proposed to be determined on the basis of the ranking method according to Fishburne's formula.It is difficult to calculate the damage from an accident, as it must include the damage caused to the shipowner, crew members, cargo owners and so on. The article proposes the introduction of four levels of severity of consequences: catastrophic, critical, significant and insignificant, while the assignment of a particular incident to a particular level of consequences is determined by the method of expert assessments.Based on a thorough analysis of the special literature, the hypothesis of the primary influence of the human element on the probability of accidents during the implementation of processes in shipping was confirmed. A method of building a risk matrix is proposed, which is based on the concept of acceptable risk − a value that is accepted by the management of the shipping company as a compromise between ensuring any level ofsafety and the costs to be incurred for the implementation of this level. Three main components of the human element are considered: individual, production and organizational and a list of questions is proposed to determine the size of the human element. The use of the proposed method will, on the one hand, increase the efficiency of the formation of ship's crews, and on the other − to optimize the processes of training and coaching of seafarers during the voyage.

Converging Technologies for Safety Planning and Inspection Information System of Portable Firefighting Equipment

Many construction workers are getting injured or killed in fires and explosion accidents each year. The workers are prone to severe fatal accidents due to unavailability of permanent firefighting system in many construction sites, thus they typically rely on portable firefighting equipment (PFE) to minimize fire damage. Many occupational health and safety agencies have developed safety regulations for PFE installation and monitoring in construction. However, in the traditional construction fire safety management process, the installation spots for PFE's are visually identified in a 2D floor plan and then top-down supervisory approach is used to inspect the active availability of the PFE's. Such manually operated conventional methods of PFE installation and monitoring are expensive, prone to manipulation, and do not provide sufficient motivation for voluntarily following fire safety policies. Therefore, this research study develops a fire safety rule-based PFE installation approach and proposes an alternative method for shifting the top-down inspection approach to the bottom-up voluntarily approach for convenient, transparent, and automated safety inspection information delivery. To validate the bottom-up approach concept, a visual language algorithm is initially developed for PFE installation planning system (PFE-IPS) in BIM, followed by an optical character recognition (OCR) and blockchain -based android application for safety inspection information system (SIIS). This article also presents two case studies to evaluate the feasibility and practicality of the developed systems. The proposed approach out-turn reduces the safety manager's manual efforts and burdens of government safety auditors while enhancing efficiency and reliability.

Safety Management in Sea Reclamation Construction: A Case Study of Sanya Airport, China

Urbanization has increased the burden on land resources. Artificial island construction has been proven as an effective method for addressing these land resource problems; however, few studies have been conducted on the safety of sea reclamation construction. This paper proposes a systemic approach to the complete safety management process in sea reclamation engineering, including safety system design, analysis, control, and assessment, using the Sanya Sea Reclamation Airport, Hainan Province, China, as a case study. A total of 145 steel cylinders must be vibrated and sunk into the seafloor to create a 9 km quay wall. Owing to their large size, the steel cylinders have been divided into different segments, and an assembly jig is employed to ensure a safe production process. Considering the hazardous working environment in sea reclamation construction, a numerical analysis is conducted to investigate the safe repertory of these steel cylinders and verify the reliability of the selected scheme for their transportation. Finally, control measures are adopted to ensure a safe vibration and sinking procedure for the steel cylinders. The proposed approach could be used to provide safety management guidelines for artificial island engineering and construction.

Stakeholder outreach on process safety for process industry using risk based approaches

AbstractFor past decades, the industry and academician realized the core of effective process safety management (PSM) is closely related to good process safety culture. Major accidents in process industry occur at low frequency but the consequences on people, environmental, and assets damage are catastrophic. Previous accidents in process industry recorded many deaths and injuries of facility personnel and public. Hence, many regulations and best practices were introduced to avoid major accidents from occurring and to mitigate the consequences. Risk based process safety (RBPS) Guideline is one of best practices to manage PSM, using risk‐based approaches. When accidents happened, internal and external stakeholders are greatly impacted if it is not mitigated effectively. Thus, element stakeholder outreach which lies in Commit to Process Safety pillars are considered as important elements to protect the stakeholders and promoting good safety culture. This article presents a structured technique for stakeholder outreach using RBPS approaches and a work‐aid model to ease its implementation in process industry. The technique and work‐aid model are beneficial to help the organization managing stakeholders, educating the public on risk management and the importance of embracing safety culture in their life.

Contribution to the ageing control of onshore oil and gas fields

The ageing of the Algerian oil and gas (O&G) installations has led to many incidents. Such installations are over 30 years old (life cycle) and still in operation. To deal with this O&G crucial problem, the Algerian authorities have launched a rehabilitation and modernization schedule of these installations. Within the framework of this program, many audit operations are initiated to elaborate a general diagnosis of the works to be performed while optimizing production. In other words, industrial ageing risks shall be controlled. In the process safety management (PSM) context, the aim of this paper is to study ageing problem of the Algerian industrial installations through proposed indicators. Their prioritization adjusted by (TOPSIS) Technique for Order-Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution method which allows identification of ageing control solutions of Algerian onshore fields.

Research on the Construction of SPD Intelligent Logistics

This paper introduced the workflow and use effect of SPD intelligent logistics supply chain management system in medical consumables management, analyzed the problems encountered in the process of hospital introduction of SPD management mode, and used PDCA principle to promote the hospital SPD before and after. using the PDCA principle to SPD before and after the introduction in such aspects as propaganda, information, system, safety management process continuously improve, in order to enhance the level of hospital consumables lean management and provide the reference for the introduction of the management system of hospital.

Incident investigation work‐aid tool for process safety management compliance in process industries

AbstractIncident investigations conducted in industries vary based on company policies and authorities' requirements. One of the related regulations as required by authorities is based on incident investigation elements of the process safety management (PSM) standard, 29 CFR 1910.119(m). This standard outlines the requirements for identification of catastrophic incident, incident investigation team setup, report writings, follow‐up actions on the established recommendations, communication of incident investigation findings with relevant personnel, and report record keeping. Many companies implement that the incident investigations based on 29 CFR 1910.119(m) likely lead to noncompliance due to wrong interpretations of the requirements. This article presents a structured and easy technique to conduct and implement incident investigations that comply with Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) PSM 29 CFR 1910.119(m). A framework and a work‐aid tool for incident investigation were developed and validated with a previous incident investigation of a catastrophic accident as a case study. The developed work‐aid tool could benefit the process industries to track and manage incident investigation activities systematically. It also helps to prompt users on the necessary actions to close the identified gaps that caused the accident. This technique allows users to manage incident investigation better, to avoid recurrence of the same accident in future, and at the same time to reduce adverse impacts on people, environment, and assets.

Big Data Management for Malaysian Small Medium Enterprise (SME) Industries Involving Dust Explosion Incidents

A dust explosion accident in Malaysia is seldom discussed by the safety practitioner or by authorities. Small Medium Enterprise (SME) industries tend to neglect the risk lies within their boundary since it was not happening, and this mainly become the reason the dust explosion event does occur repeatedly. The introduction of the trend cases in this study will be the goal in order to make industries aware the dust explosion as thread in the business operation sustainability. Data was collected through literature, case reported in DOSH website safety alert, document analysis and observation at field by using triangulation methodology in qualitative research model. It was found out there is an increasing trend in the reported cases related to dust explosion at workplace. This trend does confirm the study that dust explosion accident is becoming threat in making industry to operate in sustainable manner. Nevertheless, in Malaysia, there is still lack of awareness in understanding dust explosion accident by industrial practitioner. This is where the researcher has started an initiative in developing a local database using Microsoft Access comprising all over the world cases study. The compilation of accidents was extracted using five elements related to the Explosion Pentagon principles that will ease industrial sharing in term of lesson learn and this database known as UMP-DEx. This database is maintained by UMP researchers in Process Safety Management. The update takes place throughout years and the sharing on the best practices will be ongoing basis. The normal platform used in developing awareness in industrial is by participating in conferences, project paper publications, journal publications, and lastly by conducting training in industries. The sharing of this database will help industries in managing the same risk from happening by understanding the root cause and easily plan mitigation action to avoid this accident from happened again.

Exploring the modeling and site-ranking performance of Bayesian spatiotemporal crash frequency models with mixture components

The current study introduces the flexible approach of mixture components to model the spatiotemporal interaction for ranking of hazardous sites and compares the model performance with the conventional methods. In case of predictive accuracy based on in-sample errors (posterior deviance), the Mixture-5 demonstrated superior performance in majority of the cases, indicating the advantage of mixture approach to accurately predict crash counts. LPML (log pseudo marginal likelihood) was also calculated as a cross-validation measure based on out-of-sample errors and this criterion also established the dominance of Mixture-5, further reinforcing the superiority of the mixture approach from different perspectives.The site ranking evaluation results demonstrated the advantages of adopting the mixture approach. In terms of total rank difference (TRD) results, there were several discrepancies between the two approaches, suggesting that two approaches designate unsafe sites differently. Another site ranking criterion, site consistency test (SCT), was employed to explore the difference in identification of unsafe sites based on two datasets: estimated crash count (traditional) and the spatial variability across time. The advantage of mixture models to act as a complimentary approach for site ranking was revealed by the spatial variability SCT results. The method consistency test (MCT) results also indicate the advantages of mixture models over the Base one. These findings suggested that mixture approach may prove helpful in the network screening step of safety management process to identify sites which may turn unsafe in the future and escape the detection from traditional methods.

Staying Alert: Incorporating Human Fatigue in Risk Management

This paper addresses the role of human fatigue in workplace safety and risk management. It is well known that fatigue can increase the likelihood of workplace injuries, but the systematic application of this knowledge in safety and risk management is less well known. This paper presents a risk-based method for addressing fatigue in safety and risk management processes. The method incorporates elements of a data-driven fatigue risk management system (FRMS). Specific issues include potential data sources for the FRMS and practical applications within existing safety management systems. Special attention is paid to the fatigue risk assessment, which mirrors a common safety risk assessment and affords systematic control of fatigue-related human error.

The Gifts of Process Safety Management: Effective Process Safety Helps Make Chemical Plant Workers Safer Than Almost Any Other Occupation

The Gifts of Process Safety Management: Effective Process Safety Helps Make Chemical Plant Workers Safer Than Almost Any Other Occupation

Improving process safety: What roles for Digitalization and Industry 4.0?

Process safety and risk management remain a significant challenge for the process and manufacturing industries. Digital systems have been applied over many decades to assist in process safety management throughout the lifecycle of a process plant. There has been much hype in recent years regarding Industry 4.0, digitalization and digital twins regarding the transformative potential that exists within these technologies to improve operational performance and reduce process safety accidents.In this article, a fundamental systems thinking approach is applied to the implementation of the digital twin within the process industries. The importance of having a standardized language and ontology, such as ISO15926, enables the use of reasoning engines and the ability to interconnect models and systems across the process and product lifecycle. We discuss use-cases and forms of the digital twin to improve safety within the process industries. A specific focus shows how an operator training simulator and its embedded dynamic models are applied within this environment. The article concludes with a summary of process safety related opportunities and threats associated with the application of digitalized dynamic models in industry.

Development and quantitative evaluation of leading and lagging metrics of emergency planning and response element for sustainable process safety performance

The process industries are encountering challenges in terms of process disasters; therefore, safety performance has become a focal spot for forthcoming research. Since the process safety management (PSM) has ignored the insight behavior of performance indicators along with their associated metrics. Therefore, it is imperative to develop the leading and lagging metrics for PSM elements. The evaluation of the past major catastrophes reveals that the severity of the disasters depends upon the performance of emergency planning and response (EPR) element of the PSM standard. Although this element is not considered as the contributing factor for the disasters, however, it is more likely to be accepted as mitigation and controlling technique. The current study focusses on the development of leading and lagging metrics for EPR element through the Delphi technique for safer chemical processes. Moreover, a mathematical model, safety performance index (SPI), based on the principle of relative ranking, has been developed for the quantitative evaluation of the developed leading and lagging metrics. Then, the established model has been applied to the case study of a major accident in the process industry, which identified the poor performing metrics in the accident. Hence, this paper is aimed to develop a helpful mathematical tool for quantitative evaluation of the performance of developed leading and lagging metrics in process industries. This will allow more academic consideration and may direct future researchers towards the empirical findings for sustainable safety performance through the proposed conceptual framework.

Deficiencies frequently encountered in the management of process safety information

Process Safety Information (PSI) provides the fundamental information necessary for developing the elements of Process Safety Management (PSM). We report the PSI management deficiencies found in PSM audits of more than 70 plants. It should be noted that the PSM audits were not limited to OSHA requirements. The deficiencies found were frequently encountered in the management of the PSI element. The chemical hazards information provided on the Safety Data Sheets (SDS) are not sufficient and may not be appropriate for the process condition used; therefore, the chemical hazards information should not be limited to only the SDS. Although the information provided by the SDS satisfies the OSHA requirements, it is suggested that management further develop the chemical hazards information necessary to ensure the safety of the process. Process incidents resulting from undesired reactions are more frequent than from the desired reaction. Therefore, in terms of safety, the process chemistry of the undesired reactions is essential information for the process technology. However, such undesirable reactions are not identified, and their process chemistries are lacking for most processes. The frequently encountered problem for the information of the process equipment is the inconsistency between the piping and instrument diagram and the actual process. Summarily, the necessary information of the PSI should be developed based upon the characteristics of the process.

Major explosion at Yibin Hengda Technology Company: The causes and lessons learned

AbstractOn July 12, 2018, a devastatingly incident occurred in Yibin City at Hengda Technologyin Sichuan Province of China, which resulted in 19 deaths and 12 injuries. During the dehydration, the operator replaced butyramide with the unlabeled sodium chlorate and fed it into the reactor, which caused an explosion and fire because of the reaction of sodium chlorate with butyramide. The incident reflects the general deficiencies of process safety management in small and medium‐sized companies. This article presented a systematic analysis of the incident. The Fishbone Diagram Model was used to identify the influencing factors from six perspectives: people, design, management, environment, safety prevention, and materials. Furthermore, the main elements of process safety management, which include process hazard analysis, prestartup safety review, operation procedures, training, and emergency plan and response, are considered to analyze the incident to learn the lessons from the incident.

Managing Process Safety in the Age of Digital Transformation

Leading organizations continue to implement Process Safety Management (PSM) frameworks in an effort to reduce risk and create safe, sustainable and reliable operations. However, major incidents still occur. Even with the best PSM initiatives in place, it is difficult for organizations to understand the overall health of their assets and their process safety barriers in production operations over time. According to Petrotechnics' 2018 survey on process safety and risk management, 86% reported a gap between how process safety is intended and the reality of its implementation in operations. In 2017, an overwhelming 90% said risk awareness and safety would be improved with access to real-time process safety risk indicators - and yet the 2018 survey reveals that today 60% of companies are not proactively monitoring and managing impaired process safety barriers. An emerging category of enterprise software system for Operational Risk Management seeks to close this gap. Operational risks arise from a complicated set of interrelated parameters and are viewed and managed in differing ways depending on the role and level in the organization. The challenge these systems seek to address is to simplify this complexity using a barrier health based risk model to enable users to focus on the risk-drivers that are most important from a process safety viewpoint. This paper shares the outcomes of two projects where major operators have taken a new approach to operational risk assessment and asset integrity data to better support decision-making in relation to major hazard management.

Implementing Critical Control Management in a Mature Processing Plant

This paper describes how Process Safety Management (PSM) was improved at a mature asset following a significant process safety event. An unconventional approach was adopted to enable rapid improvements drawing on the Critical Control Approach documented in Energy Safety Canada's A Barrier Focused Approach (similar to the International Council of Mining and Metals (ICMM) publication, Critical Control Management; Implementation Guide) as well as high reliability organisational (HRO) principles.The successful approach owes its intellectual origins to the concept of Safety Critical Elements (SCEs) first enunciated by the UK Health and Safety Executive following the Piper Alpha disaster. The history of the critical control approach is briefly discussed and how the original SCE idea has been enhanced. In particular, the paper will describe how the critical controls (or barriers) have been made more visible to those charged with implementing and managing them.The paper will describe the successes and difficulties of this approach including the shift in thinking required on the part of process safety experts as well as changes to organisational structure. The paper will also illustrate how the existing documentation of the critical controls was substantially reduced and rationalised to make the PSM problem (as perceived by senior managers) more manageable and sustainable. Finally, the paper will consider the extent to which well-known international PSM frameworks enhance or inhibit the adoption of this approach.

Minimizing Audit Findings by increasing Operational Discipline and Process Safety Culture

Many major accidents have taken place in the chemical and petrochemical industry over the past 40 years (e.g. Bhopal (India, 1984), Texas City (USA, 2005)), which have been key driving forces for issuing new regulations (governments), publishing standards (industry groups), developing policies (companies), and ultimately for improving Loss Prevention strategies and Process Safety Management (PSM). On this context, a key standard is the OSHA PSM (29 CFR 1910.119), a process-based program aiming at preventing or minimizing the consequences of catastrophic releases of toxic, reactive, flammable, or explosive chemicals.The present paper focuses on the results from several PSM audits performed between 2010 and 2016, at several different Chemical Process Industry (CPI) facilities. On the one hand, we have evaluated how well these facilities complied with the requirements of the OSHA PSM Standard. On the other hand, the data from the audit findings has been compiled and statistically processed in order to compare the main common findings with the results of those analyzed by OSHA's Refinery and Chemical National Emphasis Programs (NEP) in 2012.Key audit findings from the CPI are a valued source of information for understanding current safety weaknesses. The lessons learned from this study help us to identify operational discipline and process safety leadership and culture benefits towards minimizing or avoiding audit findings, and therefore, to contributing to an optimized and sustainable Process Safety management system.

Process Safety Leading Indicators in Oil Storage and Pipelines: Building a Panel of Indicators

The inherent hazards of crude oil and other hydrocarbons have led the companies that work with these products to act toward the prevention of major accidents, so that their activities do not cause damages to the population, property and environment, apart from guaranteeing the operational continuity and survival of business. Major accidents are caused when simultaneous failures of the protection layers of the process safety management system occur. Establishing leading indicators that demonstrate process safety performance is necessary to support decision-making and prevent the degradation of safety systems and to avoid major accidents. For the implementation of these indicators, it is necessary that the anomalies related to process safety are properly and separately appropriated from occupational safety anomalies. The methodological structure of this paper relies on a research, based on approach of process safety by important institutions of the world, focusing on what has been established for leading indicators in this area. A case study in storage and transport facilities for petroleum and oil products is developed. From the theoretical framework studied, an initial database of leading indicators of process safety was structured, which was carefully customized for the industrial segment studied and allowed the initial selection of a set of process safety leading indicators. This initial database was submitted to a group of selected experts who validated these indicators. Then, with the support of the fuzzy method, a final panel of process safety leading indicators was chosen and ranked.