Vision for Chemicals Industry Safety Excellence is a Highlight of Global Congress on Process Safety | AIChE

Vision for Chemicals Industry Safety Excellence is a Highlight of Global Congress on Process Safety

April 25, 2015

Safe practices in the chemicals and related industries, along with strategies to eliminate potential hazards and improve safety culture within companies, will be spotlighted at the American Institute of Chemical Engineers’ (AIChE) 2015 Spring Meeting and 11th Global Congress on Process Safety, to be held at the Hilton Austin and Austin Convention Center in Austin, Texas, from April 26 – 30.

The Global Conference on Process Safety incorporates the programming of the 30th International Conference of AIChE’s Center for Chemical Process Safety (CCPS). CCPS works to improve safety practices at chemical and petrochemical industry facilities worldwide, and is guided by its Vision 20/20 objectives — which envision a universal culture of consistently practiced and effective process safety techniques. The five tenets of Vision 20/20 — committed safety culture, vibrant management systems, disciplined adherence to standards, intentional competency development, and the enhanced application and sharing of lessons learned — also constitute the themes of many of the CCPS Conference’s sessions in Austin.

On Monday, April 27, two sessions will be devoted to the crucial tenet of committed culture — in which company executives, managers, and the engineers they employ share a singular dedication and vigilance in regard to safe practices. Presentations in these sessions are designed to instill that necessary awareness among all chemicals and petrochemicals industry employees, and include titles such as “OK, So Our Culture Sucks! What Do We Do Now?” and “Creating a Culture of Chronic Unease.” The latter session cautions company leaders to avoid complacency — replacing attitudes exemplified by “we haven’t had an incident, things must be going well,” with a more vigilant “we haven’t had an incident, I wonder what might be sneaking up on us,” approach.

Also on Monday, a session devoted to the Vibrant Management Systems tenet includes a case study about an exemplary process safety management program at a BASF chemical plant in Ludwigshafen, Germany. Another presentation, entitled “Do Ugly Ducklings Become Black Swans?” shows how even seemingly minor details can, through inattention or benign neglect, transform into potentially catastrophic (yet theoretically foreseeable) “black swan” events.

On Tuesday, a session on Disciplined Adherence to and Harmonization of Standards will illustrate the benefits (and necessity) of adopting a universal system of safety practices and benchmarks that can be applied to industries everywhere. This session underscores one of the factors behind CCPS’s successful outreach to the chemical processing community; CCPS’s coordinated network of practitioners and member companies has enabled it to compile, document, and maintain the best available information on industrial safety practices, and to share those guidelines worldwide.

Next on Tuesday, in a session on Enhanced Application and Sharing of Lessons Learned, experts will discuss how their companies have implemented safety systems and cultures to prevent catastrophic failures in their facilities. As illustrations, the speakers will examine lessons learned from noteworthy process safety incidents including the 2010 Deepwater Horizon drilling rig explosion and oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, as well as the 1984 chemical plant accident in Bhopal, India.

Also on Tuesday, the final of the five tenets to be explored — Intentional Competency Development — will show how a workforce educated in the concepts of safety is essential not only for the implementation of successful process safety measures to protect facilities and industrial processes, but for the protection of the workforce and the surrounding community.

These Global Congress on Process Safety sessions will be supplemented by dozens more, addressing a range of process safety management topics as they apply to various chemicals industry sectors.

Overall, the 2015 AIChE Spring Meeting and Global Congress on Process Safety consist of more than 200 sessions across eight topical conferences and special program tracks, and are expected to attract more than 2,000 practitioners from around the world. In addition to the CCPS Conference, the Global Congress on Process Safety incorporates the programming of the 49th Loss Prevention Symposium, the 17th Process Plant Safety Symposium, and a new symposium on emergency relief systems. It also includes a Process Safety Management Mentoring (PSM2) Forum, which is dedicated to sharing process safety management information with young engineers entering the oil, gas, chemicals, and allied fields.

For more information about the conference or related workshops and meetings, please go to: http://www.aiche.org/spring.

About AIChE

AIChE is a professional society of 50,000 chemical engineers in 100 countries. Its members work in corporations, universities and government using their knowledge of chemical processes to develop safe and useful products for the benefit of society. Through its varied programs, AIChE continues to be a focal point for information exchange on the frontiers of chemical engineering research in such areas as energy, sustainability, biological and environmental engineering, nanotechnology and chemical plant safety and security. More information about AIChE is available at www.aiche.org.

About CCPS

CCPS is a not-for-profit corporate membership organization within AIChE that identifies and addresses process safety needs in the chemical, pharmaceutical and petroleum industries. CCPS brings together manufacturers, government agencies, consultants, academics and insurers to lead the way in improving process safety. Members, working in project subcommittees, define and develop useful, time-tested guidelines that have practical applications that run the gamut from human factors to qualitative and quantitative risk analysis to security vulnerability to inherently safety design. With more than 100 publications, CCPS is at the forefront of efforts to improve process safety performance. More information about AIChE is available at www.aiche.org/ccps.