Essential Practices for Developing, Strengthening and Implementing Process Safety Culture

Essential Practices for Developing,
Strengthening

and Implementing Process Safety Culture

David A. Moore
President &
CEO

dmoore@acutech-consulting.com

Michael Hazzan
Technical Manager

mhazzan@acutech-consulting.com

David Heller
Consulting Group
Manager
dheller@acutech-consulting.com

AcuTech Consulting
Group
1919 Gallows Rd.
Suite 900
Vienna, Virginia,
USA 22182

Keywords: Process
safety management, CCPS, PSM, Culture, Management Systems, Metrics, Process
Improvement

Abstract

Process
safety management (PSM) has been focused primarily on technical and management
systems that must be implemented that are essential to managing the risks of
catastrophic releases of highly hazardous chemicals. Devoid so far has been a
clearly defined process for focusing on the underlying PSM culture necessary to
facilitate the management system to be effective. CCPS recognized this and
formed a committee to understand the issues and recommend an approach. This
culminated in 2014 in the start of a new CCPS guideline project ?Essential
Practices for Developing, Strengthening and Implementing Process Safety Culture
? Project # 249?. This paper will explain the development of the guideline and
the key findings of the research behind the recommended practice.

A
significant amount of literature addresses working culture in industry,
however, little literature exists which is solely dedicated to the process
safety culture in the processing and allied industries. This book itemizes ?essential practices,? to assess and
strengthen process safety culture, but it is not expected to provide the
comprehensive guidance for defining detailed management systems, as is often
provided in a CCPS ?guidelines? book.  The
reader will benefit from reliable information, examples and cases studies, and
references to literature, codes, and standards.