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Process Safety Culture

On February 1, 2003, the Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated during re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere, killing all seven crewmembers aboard. After extensive investigation, the Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB) concluded that the organizational safety culture gaps contributed significantly to this loss. Upon review of The CAIB report, the CCPS Technical Steering Committee concluded that the same cultural factors that impacted NASA could also impact on the chemical and petroleumn industries. CCPS invites chemical, petroleum, and other companies to use these materials to evaluate their company's process safety culture and to develop improvement strategies.

Developing, sustaining, and enhancing the organization's process safety culture is one of elements in the RBPS pillar of committing to process safety. CCPS members invite you to start the journey by reviewing the Building Process Safety Culture Tool Kit and then explore resources listed below to understand the attributes of a sound culture, and how your organization might begin to enhance its own culture.

Process Safety Boot Camp

Instructor-led (classroom) Course
This intensive 4-day course is also offered periodically throughout the year to the broader chemical engineering public. Taught jointly by process safety veterans with decades of experience at major companies from the process industries, the course is highly interactive.Read more

Tutorial on Combustible Dust

Apr 3, 2012
Recent catastrophic dust explosions, the combustible dust National Emphasis Program (NEP), and OSHA proposed rulemaking, have increased awareness of combustible dust hazards in industry. This presentation provides an overview of combustible dust. The presentation will provide a summary of recent...

Guidelines for Preventing Human Error in Process Safety

August, 2004
Almost all the major accident investigations--Texas City, Piper Alpha, the Phillips 66 explosion, Feyzin, Mexico City--show human error as the principal cause, either in design, operations, maintenance, or the management of safety. This book provides practical advice that can substantially reduce...

Making EHS an Integral Part of Process Design

June, 2001
This book presents an approach—termed MERITT (Maximizing EHS Returns by Integrating Tools and Talents)—for enhancing process development through better integration of environmental, health, and safety evaluations. It draws upon critical components of inherent safety, pollution prevention, green...

Guidelines for Process Safety in Outsourced Manufacturing Operations

September, 2000
In today’s competitive economy, companies often augment in-house production by outsourcing chemical reaction processes and distillation, drying, formulating, blending, and packaging operations. While most of these tolling, or contracted manufacturing services, proceed without incident, recent major...

Guidelines for Vapor Release Mitigation

April, 1988
Guidelines for Vapor Release Mitigation is a survey of current industrial practice for controlling accidental releases of hazardous vapors and preventing their escape from the source area.

Fatal Exposure: Tragedy At DuPont

Apr 4, 2012
Marc G. Sáenz
This investigation by the United States Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB) provides unique lessons in process safety. Three incidents occurred over a 33-hour period at the DuPont plant in Belle, WV. The most serious incident occurred on January 23, 2010, when a release of highly...

Inherently Safer Technology Implementation -Risk Reduction and Risk Shifting

Apr 4, 2012
Iclal Atay
On March 25, 2008 the State of New Jersey adopted rules requiring facilities regulated under the Toxic Catastrophe Prevention Act (TCPA) Program to perform Inherently Safer Technology (IST) reviews. By January 2010, 85 facilities performed IST reviews and submitted their findings to the New Jersey...

Continuing Our Process Safety Management (PSM) Journey: How Time and Technology Have Helped Change the Public's View (A Case Study for Where We Are Today and Where We Can Go Tomorrow)

Apr 3, 2012
Bruce K. Vaughen
This paper briefly explores the history of basic PSM principles, first describing a historical view of how PSM developed into today's PSM Elements. Then this paper covers a proposed direction for PSM's future that may help address the changing nature of the public's view of the chemical industry –...

Process Plant Safety: An Attorney's Perspective on Key Legal and Regulatory Issues

Apr 3, 2012
Lynn L. Bergeson
That process plant safety is critically important to the sustainable growth of any manufacturing or other impacted company is indisputable. High profile process plant safety failures such as Deepwater Horizon, Bhopal, and BP Texas City are cautionary tales illustrating the tragic consequences that...

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