38th Center for Chemical Process Safety (CCPS) International Conference
The Center for Chemical Process Safety (CCPS) International Conference is one of five parallel sessions that comprise the Global Congress on Process Safety (GCPS). The CCPS Conference promotes process safety by identifying emerging process safety issues and advancing leading process safety management practices. It is dedicated to managing process safety systematically, locally, regionally and internationally.
Encouraged topics for this conference include, but are not limited to:
CCPS Chair and Vice Chair:
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James Martin & Don Connolley, CCPS_chair@aiche.org
Session Topic Descriptions:
Featured CCPS Projects: Emerging Topics, Tools, and References
Each year, teams of volunteers help develop and execute dozens of projects sponsored by the CCPS. This session seeks submissions that either provide updates from ongoing CCPS projects to share with the process safety community or lessons from the application of the resources (such as publications or toolkits) that are delivered from the CCPS project teams. A review of ongoing projects, and those looking for volunteers, can be found at https://www.aiche.org/ccps/projects.
Emerging Process Safety in Developing Nations
Most modern companies are global in nature. They operate in a variety of environments with many variables such as local culture, local laws, and government emphasis on community safety. Just because some of those operations are in developing nations does not mean that there are no potential learnings that can be provided to all process safety professionals. This session offers the opportunity for individuals working with or in a developing country environment to share their learnings with the global process safety community.
Black Swan events: What happens when the holes line up?
We rely on emergency response to effectively handle all levels of incidents that can occur at our facilities. How effective is this if a Black Swan event were to occur? How do we ensure the safety of our neighbors and the environment? Piling more safeguards onto our process may help, but what else can we do? This session seeks submissions that discuss activities that help companies be more proactive with their approaches to process safety.
We generally assume that our safety systems will function as intended and designed. But what if the safety system is down? The session is accepting papers that provide insight to ensure an acceptable level of safety during times when a safety system is not on-line, such as during inspection, testing, preventive maintenance, due to a component failure, or other similar outage.
Learning from Each Other: Application of Process Safety Principles to Other Industries
The operation of nearly all manufacturing businesses involves at least some potential hazards. The intrinsic hazards of toxicity, flammability/explosion, dust explosions, or chemical reactivity are present across all areas of manufacturing. As can readily be seen in news reports, seemingly innocuous businesses have had an event involving one or more of these hazards. Yet these hazards were largely unrecognized. This session is requesting papers on best practices involving building an effective management system at operations in which Process Safety concepts have not traditionally been applied, such as nuclear, mining, steel, aviation, agriculture, etc
Emerging Technologies to improve Process Safety Performance
Applications of new technologies are being found for improving Process Safety performance. A recent example is the use of drones to support and enhance risk-based inspection of equipment. This session seeks papers that describe and illustrate the application of new and emerging technologies in support of Process Safety performance improvement. Papers should address the technology being applied, the application(s) for which it is being applied, challenges involved in the application, results, and future applications being explored.
Small Facilities and Pilot Plants
Small facilities, pilot plants, and laboratories often have many, if not all, of the intrinsic process hazards found in larger facilities. However, the smaller scale of these hazards may impart reduced consequences and impacts in the event of loss of containment. This session is requesting papers on properly “right sizing” PSM programs for these types of facilities.
Process Safety Culture: Sense of Vulnerability
We know that a sense of vulnerability is essential to maintain the goals of a process safety program. This session seeks papers on instilling and maintaining this vulnerability (“it can happen here”) in the thinking all employees, from the shop floor to the top managers.
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Human Performance
Humans make mistakes every day – it is in our nature. This session is seeking papers which explore effective and emerging approaches to minimizing human error in the process industries, from design to decommissioning, and across all job descriptions.
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In the future, events related to weather events, civil unrest, and other events outside our control could become more of a concern to process safety professionals. Currently, we can list many examples: severe hurricanes; protests and other actions over environmental or social concerns; supply chain issues; labor shortages, and changing demographics. Topical papers about developing needs, best practices, and new or improved approaches or methodologies to address adverse external events are encouraged.
Warehousing and our communities
There are multitudes of warehouses throughout the world located in a wide range of locations, from remote to heavily populated. Some may be next to our facility, or even in our facility, and not under our control. Issues include storage conditions, volumes of stored materials, incompatible materials, stacking heights, and fire protection. What assurance do our facilities, employees, and communities have that materials are being safely stored in these warehouses. How do our companies assure that the warehouses they use conduct their activities to our standards? Are there actions that our companies, or we as process safety professionals, can take to enable such assurance? This session seeks papers addressing processes that companies or governmental entities employ to protect employees, facilities, and communities from storage hazards in warehouses that they use or that can potentially impact them.
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Cybercriminals, rogue nations, terrorists, etc., all exploit Cyber criminals, rogue nations, terrorists, etc., all exploit weaknesses in our digital control systems, automated safety systems, and facility or company networks. This is creating an environment necessitating the inclusion of these threats/hazards into our process safety and emergency response systems. This session requests papers that describe processes being used to address cybersecurity in process safety management programs.
Effective Process Safety Management Programs
Effective process safety management programs need to have a foundation of a strong safety culture, committed leadership, properly designed and integrated management systems, and operational discipline in following program requirements. Topical papers about developing needs, best practices, new or improved approaches or methodologies, interesting applications, key learnings or trends, or specific examples of successes or actions in progress related to implementing and sustaining effective process safety programs are encouraged.
GCPS Joint Session: Case Histories
Reviews of process safety incidents provide valuable learning opportunities. This session invites papers to help understand the causes and lessons learned from incidents in the industry with an emphasis on events that have helped define and develop the process safety field over the years.
