Mobile Computing for Procedure Execution Facilitation to Reduce Risk

While large sums of many have, and will continue to be, spent on engineered safeguard equipment to protect chemical process facilities from catastrophic accidents, the accidents still continue to happen. Furthermore, many of the accidents that occur on a regular basis are simple human errors such as moving the wrong valve or working on the wrong piece of equipment. In order to reduce risk, tools that can assist plan operators and maintenance technician to perform the correct actions on the correct pieces of equipment are critical. Currently available technology such as internet connected mobile phones with scanning devices can provide this critical and potentially life saving assistance. When procedures are executed with the assistance of software tools that connect the operators, maintenance technicians, shift supervisors, PSM professionals, and management using a single dashboard that allows everyone to know everything that is going on, risk can be reduced, and efficiency and profitability can be increased. This paper will describe a process for using mobile computing tools to increase safety by allowing the persons that are executing procedures to get information about each procedure step including location of the action (with GPS mapping), videos of instruction on how to perform the step, and scanning of the equipment via QR code to confirm correct locations. Furthermore, supervisors can also track the location and status of the multiple procedures that are being executed during complex operational modes such as startup and shutdown.