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Elements of Process Safety

The four pillars and the twenty elements of risk based process safety can be designed and implemented at varying levels of rigor to optimize process safety management, performance, efficiency, and effectiveness.

Management of Change (MOC) Basics for Plant Engineers

Mar 14, 2011
R. Wayne Garland
The essentials of Management of Change (MOC) for plant engineers will be presented. The meaning of MOC will be explained and its central role in safe plant operation will be shown, including how it fits with other aspects of plant safety. The objectives of MOC will be discussed along with the...

How to Develop Effective Safety Training? A Lifecycle Approach

Mar 14, 2011
Shay Segev
Safety training is one of the most important tools for upgrading the safety level and for minimizing the likelihood and the consequences of accidents. However, as the cost involved is high (most of the training cost is usually associated with its participants time), it is highly important that the...

Systematic Workforce Involvement In Process Safety

Mar 14, 2011
Cory D. Shelton
Workforce involvement is an essential element of effective process safety management. This paper will describe proven methods of workforce involvement in process safety. An assessment will then be described to evaluate the use and quality of applying these methods. Critical success factors are...

The Obvious-to-Obscure Process Safety Checklist for Plant Engineers

Mar 14, 2011
John T. Perez, Simon R. Layton
The recent process safety performance of the energy industry has led to scrutiny of industry and company-specific process safety standards, guidelines, and best practices. Several elements of process safety focus directly on the knowledge-base and experience of a facility's workforce. Plant...

LOPA – Validating Human IPLs and Ies

Mar 14, 2011
Bill Bridges
Layer of Protection Analysis (LOPA) is a simplified risk assessment method that provides an order of magnitude estimate of the risk of a potential accident scenario. Humans can be the cause on an accident scenario (the Initiating Event [IE]) or human can serve as an independent protection layer (...

Portfolio Risk Management for Process Safety

Mar 14, 2011
Georges Melhem
A majority of PSM tools and risk methodologies are focused on risks at individual sites or process units. For example, PHA risk ranking matrices are frequently cast in terms of consequences that occur at a plant level. However, corporations with many operating facilities need to find ways to...

Management of Change (MOC) Auditing System

Mar 13, 2011
R. Wayne Garland
Our company has discovered that regular auditing of the MOC process is essential to enforcing its proper use. We have developed an audit that can be performed by plant personnel to identify the effectiveness of our MOC process in 2 critical categories: (1) Identifying changes and initiating MOC for...

Quantitative Models for Assessing MOC Performance

Mar 13, 2011
Rainer Hoff
The safety community, bolstered by the PSM regulations, has emphasized the importance of proper management of change to ensure safe, reliable and economic operation of chemical plants and refineries. Yet, at many sites, the MOC process is often harshly criticized as being "too inefficient", "too...

The UK Experience In Managing Risks Arising From Human Error

Mar 13, 2011
David Embrey
Following the Piper Alpha incident in the North Sea, both offshore and onshore Oil and Gas operators in the UK were required under the COMAH (Control of Major Accident Hazards) regulations to submit a Safety Case setting out how the risks in their installations were to be managed. After many years...

On the Potential of Mitigating Vapour Cloud Explosions Using Flame Inhibitors

Mar 13, 2011
Kees Van Wingerden
Very few measures are taken to mitigate the possible consequences of vapour cloud explosions. The main attention is given to prediction of the consequences, which is used to consider strengthening structurally or re-locate occupied buildings such as control rooms. However little is undertaken to...

Incident Investigation – Addressing the Worst That Could Have Happened

Mar 13, 2011
Samuel A. Rodgers
Incident Investigation techniques typically start with a detailed description of the actual consequence and work backward toward the root causes. A lot of time is spent to qualify and quantify the actual consequence so as to appropriately apply resources to prevent recurrence. A frequent outcome of...

Kinetic Modeling of the Reactions Involved in the T2 Explosion

Mar 13, 2011
Ronald J. Willey
The runaway reaction at the chemical preparation facility called T2 laboratories in Jacksonville, Florida on December 19, 2007 is analyzed. The approached involved estimating kinetic parameters based on temperature time traces presented in the CSB final report for ARSST (Advance Reactive System...

Human Performance Training

Mar 13, 2011
Don D. Nguyen
Operator competency has been a major challenge for the petrochemical and refining industry for decades. In recent times, human factors are believed to be a consistent contributing cause for a lot of incidents. Current schemes used to determine an operator's competency are subjective and somewhat...

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