A Management Approach to Process Safety Management

In a dynamic organization responsible for process plant operations, there are new and existing process safety risks over and above the occupational safety and health risks. It is therefore unwise to ignore such hidden risks despite the lack previously occurring incidents. It is the responsibility of management to proactively lead its teams to identify risks in the process plants, evaluate them and take appropriate corrective measures to prevent any process safety incident that may lead to catastrophic situation. Process safety management system is systematic and logical in managing and controlling an ever-changing process plant environment.

For the design of process plants, process safety considerations are always put in place in process and equipment design. However, there will always be deviations from the operation point of view such that operating conditions will fall near or even temporarily exceed the design envelopes. It is therefore required that process safety management and control are ensured with corrective measures put in place such that safeguards are not violated.

Additionally, operators’ skill levels have to be sustained through on-the-job training as well as refresher training. Such training is an on-going process, and is crucial in process industry to ensure that operators are competent especially when the process plant turn-around intervals are extended over the years. It is especially when the process plant operates in a smooth and stable manner for an extended period of time such that operators do not have the opportunity to “practice” certain critical operation procedures.

Despite all efforts put in for safe process operations, plant facilities age day after day from the day construction is completed. The ageing rate depends on their service conditions and stress levels, and not necessarily solely based on the actual operating duration of the equipment. Therefore certain plant facilities integrity management programs are essential as part of the process safety management system.   

On the other hand, in order to accelerate the capacity building organizational skill levels in process safety, especially for operators and their supporting personnel, external professional process safety training support would be effective. The process safety knowledge gained from the training would certainly improve process safety in process plants through subsequent gap analysis and developing plans to improve the organizational process safety management programs.

The proactive involvement of management in improving process safety management programs will certainly and surely steer the organization in the positive direction towards a process safety incident-free operations.