Process Safety Performance Research Articles

Too close for comfort

Learning from experience is one of the four pillars of Risk‐Based Process Safety [CCPS, Guidelines for Risk Based Process Safety, New York, 2007]. Incidents that occur at one facility often provide opportunities to strengthen management systems at other facilities. Sharing the technical lessons learned from incidents is morally right and vital to improving process safety performance across the process and related industries. Most incidents also involve human factors, often as a key causal factor. Understanding these performance shaping factors can also be essential to minimizing future failures. Most articles regarding case studies on process safety incidents are written and presented by a third party who was not directly involved in the incident. As such, the articles may lack the human element and other insights that can only be properly appreciated and articulated by someone directly involved in the incident. In his early career the author was involved in two major incidents while managing the day‐to‐day operation of refinery process units. This article describes the first incident involving two major fires. In both incidents, the author found himself decidedly too close for comfort and could easily have become a casualty himself. This article will raise awareness of lessons learned relating to a number of elements of Risk‐Based Process Safety [CCPS, Guidelines for Risk Based Process Safety, New York, 2007] and human factors. © 2013 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Process Saf Prog 32: 255–259, 2013

Ccps’s Vision 2020: Characteristics of Companies with Great Process Safety Performance

CCPS’s Vision 2020 describes the characteristics of companies with great process safety performance in the future. This work is extremely important to the process industries and other industries that handle toxic, flammable, and explosive materials because it establishes targets to which companies will aspire for years to come. In developing the vision, it was also recognized that there are issues beyond the scope of individual companies that need to be addressed to enable improved process safety performance. Therefore, in Vision 2020 there are activities that go well beyond any individual company, indeed beyond the industries. The purpose of this paper is to share CCPS’s Vision 2020 with the Global Congress, begin the process of engaging the broader community in the vision and the steps to achieve it, and provide an opportunity for companies to begin comparing their current characteristics to the vision.

One company's near miss program-successes, learning, and improvements

Process safety events (or near misses and incidents) are key indicators of a company's process safety performance. The goal in reporting and evaluating near misses is to improve operators’ hazards awareness by recognizing unsafe conditions and acting on less-severe Tier 3 near miss events before they escalate into more severe Tier 1 and Tier 2 type process safety incidents. Near miss analysis can also be used to identify themes and trends that a company should focus on to improve process safety risk management at their facilities. Air Products and Chemicals has been reviewing process safety near miss events for many decades but has developed and fine-tuned a detailed and systematic near miss program within the last five years. The current program is modeled after American Petroleum Institute and Center for Chemical Process Safety guidelines with specific provisions for unique hazardous materials that Air Products handles. This article describes the global management program that must deal with the challenges of approximately 1,500 plus process safety near miss entries per year; worldwide operations in more than 40 countries; many different business units; and very diverse hazardous materials, systems, and services provided globally. The breadth of the near miss program, from technician to executive, and the depth of the program, from initial design to plant decommissioning, are presented. Near miss program learning and improvements are described that have enabled Air Products to efficiently analyze near misses, identify improvements in our process safety management program, as well as functional work processes, and effectively communicate global leadership improvement messages addressing near miss themes and trends to help support our Process Safety performance continuous improvement goals.

Normalization of process safety lagging metrics

This article explores new process safety metrics for measuring process safety performance in the chemical processing industry. While Process Safety Management enables an operation to optimize their process safety programs and organizational risks, there is an emerging need to evaluate process safety implementation across an organization through measurement of key indicators. Lagging metrics utilize process safety incidents as the numerator and divide it by an appropriate process‐related denominator or “normalization factor.” Currently, work hours is used extensively as a normalization factor to evaluate safety performance in the process industries. However, this lagging metric does not directly reflect process safety information and may not accurately reflect the safety performance of the process. Modified denominators are explored in this study and compared with the existing time‐based denominator to validate the effectiveness and applicability of the new metrics. Each proposed normalization factor was validated using available industry data. A statistical unitization method has been used to convert incident rates of different ranges for the convenience of comparison. Results show that some proposed process‐related metrics have potential as alternatives, used along with the time‐based metric, to evaluate process safety performance within organizations. © 2013 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Process Saf Prog 32: 337–345, 2013

Human factors in process safety: the top 10 issues

There is an increasing emphasis on the importance of managing human factors to achieve improved safety and business performance in the chemical process industries and resource sector. Major process safety accidents, including those at Texas City, Varanus Island and Montara have again highlighted the importance of addressing this aspect of performance. Recently the National Offshore Petroleum Safety and Environmental Management Authority (NOPSEMA) announced an additional focus on human factors as part of their regulatory activities, noting that these factors are relevant to performance across safety, integrity, and environmental management. This extended abstract explains how the subject of human factors in process safety has been defined in the UK, categorised by the top 10 key topics. How this targeted approach helps manage this aspect of process safety performance is also discussed. Finally, this extended abstract shows how safety culture and behavioural safety are not the same as human factors. Case studies of the oil and gas industry show how attending to the top 10 delivers benefits by strengthening the effectiveness of management systems, and improving human reliability. This extended abstract directs the reader to a range of high-quality, open-source research, guidance, tools, and techniques to improve across the top 10 human-factors subjects in process safety.

How to be effective in a process safety role

Many factors contribute to being capable and effective in process safety roles. Certainly, understanding of engineering and process safety is desirable to establish basic technical competence. Ultimately, true capability and career success also requires the ability to work within an organization to help achieve superior and effective performance. This article discusses how to be effective in a process safety role by developing a strong foundation of technical knowledge and capability, by learning to influence the organization, and by thinking and communicating independently. The result should be career success as well as improved process safety performance, helping to prevent serious injuries and incidents. © 2012 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Process Saf, 2012.

How to evaluate process safety culture

AbstractIt may seem that organizational culture is subjective and therefore difficult to measure. This article will show that an objective approach can be taken to survey and define process safety culture. With this data, gap analysis can be performed that compares survey data to the Center for Chemical Process Safety (CCPS) essential elements of process safety. This gap analysis can be used to identify strengths and weaknesses so that process safety performance can be improved.The survey method used, employs the CCPS process safety pillars, and categorizes responses according to the pillar elements, principles, and essential features required for excellence. The appropriate data collecting technique is shown that will give statistically meaningful results. Examples are given of grouping results by safety pillar categories and demographics of the survey population. Finally, a gap analysis method is shown that compares the survey results to CCPS essential elements so that improvement plans can be made. © 2012 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Process Saf Prog, 2012

Objective analysis of process safety audit data with microsoft access

AbstractIn developing systems for process safety, compliance audits provide essential verification that practices and procedures are developed and are effective for compliance. Data collected during compliance audits is often subjective and findings are descriptive in nature. Therefore, it is difficult to complete objective analysis of audit data across standards/procedures to surface systemic management system gaps and to compare site performance across a company. Complete analysis of process safety audit data is analogous to incident investigation causal factor assignment, data analysis, and cause elimination.This article describes a database solution that: Provides a data collection method for compliance audits that allows for easy database input, thereby reducing overall data handling. Structures process safety procedures by management system element so that these elements can be examined across various procedures. Groups compliance audit findings by common types for Pareto analysis. The benefits of objective analysis of process safety audit data include more effective future audits and continuous process safety performance improvement at the site level.The presentation will include a brief review of the Microsoft Access database structure. © 2011 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Process Saf Prog, 2011

Real-Time Optimizing Nonlinear Control Applied to a Continuous Reactive Distillation Process

AbstractChemical processes are usually operated under feedback control of critical operating conditions to maintain process safety, product quality and economic performance. Increasingly, linear model predictive is applied to these coupled multivariable control problems and in some cases the reference values are adapted infrequently by an optimization based as a rigorous nonlinear stationary plant model (RTO). However, in between these optimizations that plant may operate suboptimally due to the presence of disturbances. In recent years, it has been proposed to use nonlinear model-based optimization of the available degrees of freedom of a process over a finite moving horizon to integrate set-point optimization and feedback control (for a survey see Engell (2007)). In this paper we demonstrate the feasibility and the potential of the optimizing nonlinear control for a challenging example, a reactive distillation column. The performance of the controller is an economics-driven response since the profit function represents the main part of the objective criterion while the quality specifications as well as the physical limitations of the process were incorporated as optimization constraints. A performance comparison between the tracking controller and the optimizing nonlinear controller is also shown.

Implementing an effective conduct of operations and operational discipline program

This paper introduces the concepts of conduct of operations (COO) and operational discipline (OD), the attributes of effective COO/OD systems, and the steps an organization might take to improve its COO/OD programs. In general, the COO program encompasses the management systems developed to encourage performance of all tasks in a consistent, appropriate manner. OD is the deliberate and structured execution of the COO management systems by personnel throughout the organization. By introducing a framework and tools for describing, evaluating, and improving COO/OD, this paper provides guidance that can be used by companies to improve process safety performance.

Regulatory initiative for improving industry process safety performance

AbstractWith the promulgation of regulations in the nineties, targeted to improve process safety for facilities using extremely hazardous substances, there is general agreement that many process safety programs have improved. However, there are still many significant low‐probability high‐consequence accidents, and there is concern that such accidents will continue in the face of issues like cost constraints and the retirement of experienced workers.This article is about the State of Delaware's Accidental Release Prevention program's efforts to improve industry process safety programs and reduce accidental releases beyond our existing state accidental release prevention regulation, without adding significant burdens to industry. Amending one program's rule (release notification) to help meet the objectives of another's program's rule (accidental release prevention) is not normal procedure. However, we believe this regulatory amendment to be a consistent tool for identifying accidental releases and for holding individual facilities accountable for their process safety performance. © 2010 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Process Saf Prog, 2010

Development of risk‐based process safety indicators

AbstractProcess safety performance indicators are applied to monitor and improve the safety of process plants. One of the most important and challenging issues for process safety is the early recognition of deterioration in safety performance caused by operation, maintenance, management, organization, and safety culture factors before actual events and/or mishaps occur. Most existing safety performance indicators are “lagging” indicators meaning that they monitor events after their occurrence.This article presents a risk‐based approach to measure process safety using a set of safety performance indicators. This approach uses a risk metric as a means to classify process safety. Risk provides a common ground to integrate the two main indicator types of leading and lagging indicators. It is important to note that lagging and leading indicators have a relationship, which is often ignored. The proposed methodology is a structured approach, which builds upon UK's Health Safety Executive recommended process safety indicator development framework. At present, work efforts have been made to develop a set of indicators with a common background to measure process safety. This article demonstrates a hierarchical risk aggregation approach which is used to aggregate indictors. This work was carried out with the help of the Loss Prevention Division of Qatargas Operating Company Limited (Qatargas), a Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) company. Finally, the applicability of the approach is demonstrated by a case study on a liquefied natural gas facility. The result of this study shows a relationship between the leading and lagging indicators which together contribute to the improvement of process safety performance. © 2009 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Process Saf Prog, 2010

Cheddar or Swiss? How strong are your barriers?

AbstractThis article describes a company's experience with process safety metrics and describes systematic methods to improve safety performance. As a result of a major accident, an internal investigation identified that although a site may have numerous measures for tracking operational and safety performance, these measures may not focus on leading indicators that could provide early warning of potential major incidents.To systematically reduce incidents, especially, low probability high consequence process safety events, it is necessary to focus on prevention and specifically the strength of the barriers. The approach described in this article, therefore, aims to create a combination of Process Safety Performance Indicators that lead to stronger more robust barriers.While industrial history tells us that such high consequence events are infrequent, this significant process safety risk is always present in production operations, and thus needs to be continuously assessed and reduced through systematic safety management. Within one company, this recognition has resulted in a substantial strengthening of process safety risk management through a more comprehensive system of controls embedded within its new Operating Management System, which is being implemented at the site level across all of its operations globally.This article explores the ongoing methodology and approach being used to select a limited but crucial set of Process Safety Performance Indicators to enable effective measurement and the appropriate management of process safety performance. © 2009 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Process Saf Prog, 2009

Improving process safety by addressing the human element

AbstractCelanese had several process safety incidents and near misses in 1996. Although there were several root causes, this article will address only one of them; human error. The system which was developed by Celanese to improve this human element is the conduct of operations system. The conduct of operations system has improved process safety performance of the human element by focusing on three operational areas: training, procedures, and general operations.Conduct of operations is a proactive approach to improve the current practices, improve the support systems and the behavior of the operator. The benefits include the following: Consistent application of training and procedures Reduction in human error, and Less process safety incidents This article will describe the need for and the content of conduct of operations system as implemented by Celanese. © 2009 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Process Saf Prog, 2009

The use of the Pareto shape parameter as a leading indicator of process safety performance

AbstractMetrics addressing process safety incident performance typically focus on frequency and severity statistics. Often, these lagging metrics are not overly sensitive to actual performance, making trending and forecasting difficult. This article presents the results from a statistical study of a large incident dataset where changes in the Pareto shape parameter were observed as a function of time. This approach has been found to give far better insight into process safety performance than traditional incident metrics and readily relates back to concepts such as the “incident triangle” and “layers of protection.” Through the application of this approach, trends within process safety incident performance have been observed earlier, and more accurate forecasting has allowed for the identification of anomalies. In turn, these critical observations have allowed for the better structuring and targeting of process safety programs. Although incident data are generally considered as a lagging indicator, this approach has clearly reduced the lag time associated with this type of data and has given valuable insight into the current status of process safety performance. © 2009 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Process Saf Prog 2009

Using measured performance as a process safety leading indicator

AbstractPeriodic demands on layers of protection (i.e., prealarms, safety instrumented functions, relief devices, emergency response systems, etc.) are precursors to more serious incidents. The failure of one or more layers of protection is always part of an accident sequence. When they occur documenting these demands and the associated consequences in a way to facilitate analysis, provides a means to measure process safety management performance. Although process safety metrics are still in their adolescence, this article reviews experiences of development and implementation of a “Challenges to Safety Systems” process safety performance indicator. This article includes a discussion of automating significant portions of the data collection process based on the technical work documented by the CCPS PERD (Process Equipment Reliability Database) initiative. The article also recommends various metrics that can be calculated and describes how the initial foundation developed to support improved process safety can be leveraged to achieve other benefits, such as design improvements and improvements in the reliability, operation, and maintenance of the facility. © 2009 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Process Saf Prog, 2009

Process safety performance indicators: A contribution to the debate

Process safety performance indicators: A contribution to the debate

Prospects and limitations of process safety performance indicators

Prospects and limitations of process safety performance indicators

Nurturing a strong process safety culture

AbstractProcess safety management introduced a formal, structured, management systems approach to accident prevention that represented a “step change” improvement in identifying and reducing the potential for major process plant accidents. Although the process safety management elements have proven effective, the overall sustainability remains a challenge. This paper highlights the importance of a strong process safety culture that is needed to sustain a strong process safety performance. We use the Columbia Shuttle disaster incident as a backdrop to focus the attention on the significance of not having an optimal “Safety Culture.” Examples have been included from our industry to further exemplify its broad applicability. The paper proposes an approach that will help organizations to self‐assess the state of the process safety culture in their organizations, which can be an aid in their ongoing cultural improvement effort. Four important cultural themes are identified and described: (1) Create awareness and buy‐in about process safety culture themes, (2) adapt process safety culture themes to your company experience, (3) use suggested indicators to identify specific areas of improvement, and (4) develop a strategic improvement plan to strengthen and sustain process safety culture. © 2005 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Process Saf Prog, 2006

Use of failure rate databases and process safety performance measurements to improve process safety

Employing equipment reliability databases can generate a process of continual improvement. This paper suggests a methodology that uses equipment reliability databases, and a process of benchmarking to establish a continual improvement procedure by learning “how others are doing it”. A simple decision-making procedure is suggested too, to assist in prioritizing the processes/equipment that are considered to be improved as well as a methodology to measure the improvement.