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    Pecs Essay

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    Nathan Isles
    This document discusses lessons that can be learned from past chemical processing safety incidents to prevent future accidents. Repeatedly, accident analyses find deficiencies in design, human factors, and hazard and knowledge management. To improve safety, designs must integrate safety and be inherently safe, and multiple independent safety layers should be designed in, not added later. Catastrophic incidents often result from management decisions that create latent failures. Strong process safety leadership is needed to drive an informing culture and change behaviors. Leaders must engage employees in safety management and treat them as partners rather than problems. Adequate training and a culture of constant mindfulness are also critical, with an emphasis on understanding why safety procedures are important, not just completing tasks.

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    Pecs Essay

    Uploaded by

    Nathan Isles
    132 views3 pages
    This document discusses lessons that can be learned from past chemical processing safety incidents to prevent future accidents. Repeatedly, accident analyses find deficiencies in design, human factors, and hazard and knowledge management. To improve safety, designs must integrate safety and be inherently safe, and multiple independent safety layers should be designed in, not added later. Catastrophic incidents often result from management decisions that create latent failures. Strong process safety leadership is needed to drive an informing culture and change behaviors. Leaders must engage employees in safety management and treat them as partners rather than problems. Adequate training and a culture of constant mindfulness are also critical, with an emphasis on understanding why safety procedures are important, not just completing tasks.

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    This document discusses lessons that can be learned from past chemical processing safety incidents to prevent future accidents. Repeatedly, accident analyses find deficiencies in design, human factors, and hazard and knowledge management. To improve safety, designs must integrate safety and be inherently safe, and multiple independent safety layers should be designed in, not added later. Catastrophic incidents often result from management decisions that create latent failures. Strong process safety leadership is needed to drive an informing culture and change behaviors. Leaders must engage employees in safety management and treat them as partners rather than problems. Adequate training and a culture of constant mindfulness are also critical, with an emphasis on understanding why safety procedures are important, not just completing tasks.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    132 views3 pages

    Pecs Essay

    Uploaded by

    Nathan Isles
    This document discusses lessons that can be learned from past chemical processing safety incidents to prevent future accidents. Repeatedly, accident analyses find deficiencies in design, human factors, and hazard and knowledge management. To improve safety, designs must integrate safety and be inherently safe, and multiple independent safety layers should be designed in, not added later. Catastrophic incidents often result from management decisions that create latent failures. Strong process safety leadership is needed to drive an informing culture and change behaviors. Leaders must engage employees in safety management and treat them as partners rather than problems. Adequate training and a culture of constant mindfulness are also critical, with an emphasis on understanding why safety procedures are important, not just completing tasks.

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    You are on page 1of 3

    Nathan Isles, 636418.

    CHEN30015, 2015. Assignment 2.


    Process Engineering Safety: What can we do to stop future
    incidents?
    Chemical processing facilities have been historically infamous scenes of safety
    accidents. It is by studying these accidents, however, that we strive to achieve
    an understanding of their underlying causes and prevent similar future incidents
    from occurring. Repeatedly, in accident analysis, the same problems emerge:
    deficiencies in design, human factors and hazard and knowledge management.
    Designs must be inherently safe. A processs design must integrate the lessons
    learnt into its system and procedures. Safety must be part of design, not
    something added afterwards. A more complicated system is more hazardous,
    maintenance-demanding and energy-hungry (Hopkins, 2000). Simplification and
    intensification reduces these limitations. Multiple and notionally independent
    layers of safety measures, designed so that no single failure can precipitate a
    serious safety incident can occur should be designed into the system not added
    as an after-thought (Kletz & Amyotte, 2010).
    Catastrophic industrial incidents are not the result of a single error but rather a
    chain of decisions that originate with management that often create latent failure
    (Appleton, 1991). If leaders take a lax position on procedure safety, similar
    attitudes are likely to be bred among employees. There must be a strong process
    safety leader; someone who can drive an informing culture and therefore drive a
    change in behaviour (I. McCleod, personal communication, September 7, 2015).
    Someone willing to step outside the comfort of offices and paperwork. The focus
    needs to shift from not only performing hazard management, to physical human
    interactions and owning the critical issues at hand. That is, from paper-based
    procedures to worker (in all facets) culture and consequently behavioural
    changes. The leader should seek to engage employees in process safety
    management and treat operators as solutions to be harnessed, not problems to
    be solved (Dekker, 2015).
    Employees should adhere to site guidelines not just because theyre written in a
    document, but because they aware of and informed about the risks they face
    and want to protect themselves. Again, this requires visible leadership; someone
    capable of influence and creating lasting changes in workplace culture. Through
    these actions, a company should aim to create and nurture an environment of
    constant mindfulness that there is always the possibility that something could
    go wrong (I. McCleod, personal communication, September 7, 2015).
    However, merely being mindful of the possibility of an accident is not sufficient.
    The creation and maintenance of a culture of safety must be tied in with
    adequate knowledge (S.Lewis, personal communication, September 11, 2015). It
    is critical that operators not only understand how to perform a task, but also the
    underlying principles which dictate why the task must performed as instructed.
    People in the industry are given immense amounts of training to absorb. Again,
    emphasis is often placed upon the procedure rather than the underlying why (I.
    McCleod, personal communication, September 7, 2015). Unless it is constantly
    reinforced, it is unlikely that operators will retain this training for very long.
    Presentation of regulations and rules in this manner takes away from the
    intended purpose: the protection and wellbeing of the workers themselves. The
    Page 1 of 3

    Nathan Isles, 636418.


    focus tends to shift to the completion of the procedure itself; and, dangerously
    becomes merely about ticking the box. As Sir Brian Appleton said: safety is not
    an intellectual exercise to keep us employed it is a matter of life and death.
    Rarely do company leaders ensure this is done; such training is often perceived
    as an unnecessary expense. For them, process system status tends to be
    considered not from the viewpoint of the operators, but an economic
    perspective. Hence it is also not uncommon for such leaders to cut facility
    maintenance to meet board costs; justifications rarely extend beyond this. They
    must be able to justify why and how they either improve or are no longer
    required as part of the system from both an operational and reliability
    standpoint (M. Lapworth, personal communication, September 11, 2015). Thus it
    is also crucial that they themselves adopt a broader understanding and employ a
    high standard of rigor around managing operational and/or training changes.
    In every accident throughout history, behind the critical action which led to
    disaster, there has existed a set of deficiencies. Deficiencies in emergency
    training, hazard management and leadership in developing a culture of on-site
    safety. Safety is about leadership, culture, management and systems. Its quality
    is the sum of the attitudes, behaviours and understanding of every individual,
    both on site and in management.

    References:
    Appleton, B. (1991) Learning from Accidents: the Piper Alpha Oil Platform
    Disaster [videocassette], VEC International Production for ICI Group Safety.
    Dekker, S (2015) Safety Differently Human Factors for a New Era, CRC Press:
    Taylor & Francis Group.
    Hopkins, A (1999a) Managing Major Hazards: The Lessons of the Moura Mine
    Disaster, Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 140-157.
    Hopkins, A (2000) Lessons from Longford: The Esso Gas Plant Explosion, CCH,
    Australia, Sydney.
    Kletz, T. & Amyotte, P (2010). Process Plants: A Handbook for Inherently Safer
    Design, Second Edition. CRC Press.
    Quinlan, M, (2014) Ten Pathways to Death and Disaster Learning from Fatal
    Incidents in Mines and Other High Hazard Workplaces, The Federation Press: PO
    Box 45, Annandale, NSW, 2038.
    Reason, J (2000b) Safety Paradoxes and safety culture, Injury Control and Safety
    Promotion, 7(1):3-14.
    Private communication with Lapworth, M., Bachelor of Engineering (Chemical)
    1978, Monash University. Managing Director of Ibis Business Solutions.

    Page 2 of 3

    Nathan Isles, 636418.


    Private communication with McCleod, I., University of Melbourne, Bachelor of
    Engineering (Hons, Civil), 1987. Director of safety for The Level Crossing
    Removal Authority.
    Private communication with Lewis, S. Bachelor of Engineering (Chemical),
    Monash University, 1984. Heath, Safe and Environment Manager for Terminals
    Pty Ltd.

    Page 3 of 3

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