Spotlight on Safety: Remember the Event, Appreciate the Progress

Sisyphus is a character in Greek mythology who is doomed by the gods to roll an immense boulder up a hill only to have it roll back down every time it nears the top (Figure 1). His punishment is to repeat this action for eternity. Those who work in process safety can relate to this character. Every day we struggle to move the process safety rock toward the goal of zero process safety incidents. It may appear that we are making little progress. However, we only need to look back to the causes of the grave events of the past to understand just how far process safety has come since the Bhopal gas tragedy 40 years ago, the Phillips 66 event 35 years ago, and unfortunately, many others.

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▲Figure 1. Many people who work in process safety can relate to Sisyphus. Working toward the goal of zero process safety incidents can feel like an endless uphill battle.

Historical perspective

As an engineer who was practicing well before formal process safety programs existed, I can vividly see the improvements that have been made across all facets of process safety. Did we have operating procedures? Sure. Were they well written? They were passable at best. Did we conduct maintenance inspections? Of course; but did they have the frequency and rigor needed to prevent process safety events? Definitely not. I could extend this list across all elements of the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) Process Safety Management (PSM) regulation. We were lacking in all areas of process safety, but especially in the management systems we rely upon today. This is not to condemn those who were operating plants at that time, but more to illustrate the journey we have traveled to date and to highlight the gaps that need to be addressed as we move the process safety rock further uphill.

Reflecting on the past, we felt we were operating plants safely; however, we had no stated criteria for what “safely” meant. This left the risk criteria to be interpreted by whoever was in leadership at that time. Some leaders prioritized production over safety; I doubt that those leaders realized the dangers their actions and decisions created for their workers and their businesses. We were also fortunate to have many leaders who understood the hazards of the process and reinforced the systems needed to prevent incidents.

Process safety was often a priority that could and would change with the business climate and leader at the helm. Safety was seldom seen as an unchanging value that anchored our decisions. We relied on readily available stopgap measures and quick fixes to address process upsets, equipment failures, and incidents. We did not investigate these problems well and failed to dig deep enough to understand the true causes. We failed to “think the unthinkable.”...