Process Safety Midterm 1 - Qualitative Information (Ch 1)

Regulation

regulation is developed by a government and has legal authority. It may be based on a code or standard. Violations of regulations could result in fines and/or jail time.

Code

set of rules developed by a team of knowledgeable people. The knowledgeable people are most likely associated with an industrial professional organization. Codes do not have legal authority, but governments might adopt it into law.

Preventative Safeguard

Prevents an initiating event from proceeding to a defined, undesirable incident. Also called a protection layer. The preventive safeguard stops the incident from proceeding. Examples: • Basic process control system (BPCS) • Alarm systems • Operator response to an alarm or process conditions • Pressure relief system with containment • Maintenance • Interlocks • Emergency shutoff valves • Emergency cooling systems • Grounding and bonding to prevent static accumulation • Normal testing and inspection

Hierarchy of Safety: 2

Complying- to rules and regulations

Voluntary risk

- Risk that is consciously tolerated by someone seeking to obtain the benefits of the activity that poses the risk. Examples: Riding a car, Riding a motorcycle

Societal risk

A group of people exposed to one or more hazards. Hazard and group must be carefully defined.

Process Safety Elements: Safety Culture

A positive environment where employees at all levels are committed to process safety. This starts at the highest levels of the organization and is shared by all. Process safety leaders nurture this process. Activities associated with this Element: • Develop or deploy corporate process safety culture programs. • Identify process safety culture issues and influence corporate changes. • Involvement in maintaining a strong process safety culture within team members. • Involvement in formal assessments to identify gaps and recommend improvements in process safety culture

Element 5: Stakeholder Outreach

A process for identifying, engaging and maintaining good relationships with appropriate external stakeholder groups. This would include the surrounding community, suppliers of raw materials, customers, government agencies and regulators, professional societies, contractors, etc. Activities Associated with this Element: • Lead community action panel (CAP) meetings. • Work with the local community to create area CAP and facilitate meetings. • Develop site or corporate practices or standards to coordinate and manage major off-site accident risks to include communications with stakeholders. • Coordinate an emergency response simulation or drill in the community

Standard

A standard is more elaborate, explaining in a lot more detail how to meet the code. Codes tell you what you need to do and the standard tells you how to do it. Also not law.

Hierarchy of Safety: 3

Management systems based such as Job Safety Assessment (JSA), lock-out / tag-out, etc

Element 20: Management Review and Continuous Improvement

Activities Associated with this Element: • Participate in management reviews. • Evaluate results from management reviews and proposed / reviewed recommendations for improvement. • Engage management to follow-up and close out actions derived from management reviews. The practice of managers at all levels of setting process safety expectations and goals with their staff and reviewing performance and progress towards those goals. May take place in a staff or "leadership team" meeting or one-on-one. May be facilitated by process safety lead but is owned by the line manager.

Element 10: Asset Integrity and Reliability

Activities to ensure that important equipment remains suitable for its intended purpose throughout its service. Includes proper selection of materials of construction; inspection, testing, and preventive maintenance; and design for maintainability. Activities Associated with this Element: • Review and assess data from inspections and draw conclusions and make recommendations. • Develop or implement practices / procedures / strategies to manage the integrity in a facility, site or company. • Look up corrosion rates to provide general guidance for developing specifications.

Hierarchy of Safety: 5

Adapting - safety is a core value of the organization and a primary driver for successful enterprise.

Element 2: Compliance with Standards

Applicable regulations, standards, codes, and other requirements issued by national, state/provincial, and local governments, consensus standards organizations, and the corporation. Interpretation and implementation of these requirements. Includes development activities for corporate, consensus, and governmental standards. Activities Associated with this Element: • Interpret or apply standards for internal use. • Participate in standards development. • Develop a system to identify standards and uniformly administer and maintain the information.

Element 4: Workforce Involvement

Broad involvement of operating and maintenance personnel in process safety activities, to make sure that lessons learned by the people closest to the process are considered and addressed. Activities Associated with this Element: • Develop, lead or participate in organizing workforce involvement efforts at the corporate, business, plant or unit level. • As a supervisor, regularly lead discussions around process safety concerns or issues with operating personnel. • As a worker, provide constructive feedback aimed at improving process safety and track feedback to resolution.

Element 14: Operational Readiness

Evaluation of the process before start-up or restart to ensure the process can be safely started. Applies to restart of facilities after being shut down or idled as well as after process changes and maintenance. Also applies to start-up of new facilities. Activities Associated with this Element: • Lead / participate in pre-startup safety reviews (PSSR). • Develop commissioning and start-up plans. • Identify critical process safety information (PSI) required to operate safely. • Start up a process that is ready to operate.

Element 7: Hazard Identification and Risk Analysis

Identification of process safety hazards and their potential consequences. Definition of the risk posed by these hazard scenarios. Recommendations to reduce or eliminate hazards, reduce potential consequences, reduce frequency of occurrence. Analysis may be qualitative or quantitative depending on the level of risk. Activities Associated with this Element: • Develop and/or implement corporate methods and procedures for hazards analysis and risk assessment. • Develop consequence assessment simulations. • Lead or participate in process hazards analysis (PHA)

Element 18: Measurement and Metrics

Leading and lagging indicators of process safety performance, including incident and near-miss rates as well as metrics that show how well key process safety elements are being performed. This information is used to drive improvement in process safety. Activities Associated with this Element: • Site lead for or participation in collecting and reporting metrics. • Prepare reports on process safety metrics. • Develop and implement site or company metrics.

Element 15: Conduct of Operations

Means by which management and operational tasks required for process safety are carried out in a deliberate, faithful, and structured manner. Managers insure workers carry out the required tasks and prevent deviations from expected performance. Activities Associated with this Element: • Implement practices intended to maintain the operational discipline at a facility. • As a front line worker, cooperate with peers to insure that performed tasks are done exactly as prescribed over a long period of time. • Actively monitor and make corrective action plans related to the performance of process safety operating tasks.

Hierarchy of Safety: 0

No safety program. Maybe even disdain for safety

Individual risk

One person exposed to one or more hazards. Usually location dependent.

Passive

Passive - minimizes the hazard thru process and equipment design features that reduce either the frequency or consequence without the active functioning of any device. • Using equipment with a higher pressure rating than the max. possible pressure. • Blast walls around equipment to reduce blast overpressures. • Dikes around storage vessels to contain spills. • Separation of equipment in plant layout to reduce prepagation of impacts.

Hierarchy of Safety: 4

Performance monitoring using statistics to drive continuous improvement.

Element 19: Auditing

Periodic critical review of process safety management system performance by auditors not assigned to the site to identify gaps in performance and identify improvement opportunities, and track closure of these gaps to completion. Activities Associated with this Element: • Participate in process safety audits, either as auditor or audited. • Develop process safety audit methods. • Manage audit recommendations to insure they are implemented.

Element 16: Emergency Management

Plans for possible emergencies that define actions in an emergency, resources to execute those actions, practice drills, continuous improvement, training or informing employees, contractors, neighbors, and local authorities, and communications with stakeholders in the event an incident does occur. Activities Associated with this Element: • Set up or participate in emergency response drills with community responders. • Work with corporate to perform emergency drills or table-top drills. • Participate in planning and addressing potential plant emergencies.

Element 12: Training and Performance Assurance

Practical instruction in job and task requirements and methods for operations and maintenance workers, supervisors, engineers, leaders, and process safety professionals. Verification that the trained skills are being practiced proficiently. Activities Associated with this Element: • Develop process safety training programs. • Oversight of corporate or site process safety training program. • Give or receive process safety training.

Element 11: Contractor Management

Practices to ensure that contract workers can perform their jobs safely, and that contracted services do not add to or increase facility operational risks Activities Associated with this Element: • Audit contractors for safety. • Developed recommendations / actions to improve contractor performance. • Developed process safety requirements for hiring new site contractors

Element 17: Incident Investigation

Process of reporting, tracking, and investigating incidents and near-misses to identify root causes, taking corrective actions, evaluating incident trends, and communicating lessons learned. Activities Associated with this Element: • Participate in an incident investigation. • Manage incident investigation action items. • Develop / implement corporate procedures for incident investigation.

Element 13: Management of Change (MOC)

Process of reviewing and authorizing proposed changes to facility design, operations, organization, or activities prior to implementing them, and that the process safety information is updated accordingly. Activities Associated with this Element: • Develop corporate procedures for change management. • Participate in management of change reviews. • Author MOC documentation. • MOC coordinator

Hierarchy of Safety: 1

Reacting- to accidents as they occur

Minimize

Reduce hazardous material/energy quantity; reduces potential accident severity

Simplify

Reduce unnecessary complexity; reduces likelihood of an accident

Mitigative Safeguard

Reduces the consequences after an incident has occurred. May already have consequences as a result of the incident. Examples: • Active fire protection, including sprinklers, sprays • Emergency fire water system • Passive fire protection including insulation • Flammable vapor detectors • Emergency response, including on-site and off-site • Plant and equipment layout and spacing • Diking around storage areas / process. • Emergency power • Blast walls • Water curtains to disperse vapors • Blast resistant control rooms • Explosion blow-out panels on process vessels

Substitute

Replace with a less hazardous material; reduces/eliminates available chemical energy and accident severity

Active

Requires an active response. These systems are commonly referred to as engineering controls, although human intervention is also included. • Alarms, with operator response. • Process control systems, including basic process control system (BPCS), safety instrumented systems (SIS) and safety instrumented functions (SIF). • Sprinklers and water deluge systems. • Pressure relief devices. • Inerting and purging systems. • Water curtains to knock-down gas releases. • Flares

Involuntary risk

Risk that is imposed on someone who does not directly benefit from the activity that poses the risk.

Element 3: Process Safety Competency

Skills and resources that the company needs to have in the right places to manage its process hazards. Verification that the company collectively has these skills and resources. Application of this information in succession planning and management of organizational change. This does not mean individual competency, but rather corporate competency! Activities Associated with this Element: • Develop a training program to increase worker's level of competency. • Develop competency profiles for critical process safety positions. • Evaluate a unit to determine gaps in competency

Element 6: Process Knowledge Management

The assembly and management of all information needed to perform process safety activities. Verification of the accuracy of this information. Confirmation that this information is correct and up-to-date. This information must be readily available to those who need it to safely perform their jobs. Activities Associated with this Element: • Validate existing P&IDs with actual plant configuration. • Develop safe operating limits and consequences of deviations for a process unit. • Update process safety knowledge following management of change (MOC). • Write internal standards for the company. • Develop database for relief devices.

Safety culture

The common set of values, behaviors, and norms at all levels in a facility or in the wider organization that affect process safety The normal way things are done at a facility, company, or organization, reflecting expected organizational values, beliefs, and behaviors, that set the priority, commitment and resource levels for safety programs and performance.

Moderate

Use under less hazardous conditions Available energy may be the same but passively reduces potential loss event impacts For chemical processes usually means lower temperatures, pressures, concentrations

Element 8: Operating Procedures

Written instructions for a manufacturing operation that describes how the operation is to be carried out safely, explaining the consequences of deviation from procedures, describing key safeguards, and addressing special situations and emergencies. Activities Associated with this Element: • Write or revise operating procedures to make them clearer and more usable. • Review and update operational procedures for a site. • Identify safe operating limits for a process.