Proactive Approach in Improving Process Safety Performance at Hydrocarbon Industry

Most major process safety incidents are preventable and can be avoided as shown in several incident investigation reports. Moreover, these reports indicated that these incidents were certain to occur as shown from the related near-misses and safety control system failures that occurred prior to the incidents.

The key element to improve process safety performance is developing effective process safety leading indicators. In the past, the petrochemical industrial organizations used traditional personnel safety measures to measure process safety performance. Now, most of the current industrial facilities focus more on process safety lagging indicators. Ignoring organizational factors and lacking a systematic approach were the major deficiencies during the development of process safety indicators.

The main objective of this paper is to share an actual field experience of the implementation of a systematic technique to improve process safety performance and develop process safety indicators by selecting the most effective leading indicators, conducting accurate measurements, monitoring these metrics on a frequent basis, and revalidating the measures using lagging indicators. Several challenges and obstacles occurred during the implementation of this initiative to improve of process safety performances.

The effects and contribution of different organizational factors were studied and analyzed within process safety performance. Safety culture, process safety leadership, data collection system, and proactive monitoring are critical factors that directly impact the development and improvement of process safety leading indicators.