RISK MANAGEMENT lessons from the past

On June 1 1974 twenty eight workers were killed and nearly two thousand properties in Scunthorpe were severely damaged in an explosion at Nypro's caprolactam plant at Flixborough. The accident is regarded as the most serious accident in the UK chemical industry for years. Its legacy was to redefine UK health and safety practices and usher in a whole new approach to health and safety.

The causes of the disaster, both accepted and disputed, are the subject of the following article on page 27, but what is beyond doubt is that the failure of a temporary by-pass pipe released a huge vapour cloud of cyclohexane which exploded with a blast equivalent to more than 15 tons of TNT.

It has been suggested that the Flixborough disaster was the inevitable outcome of the pre-risk assessment culture of 1960's and '70's legislation. The report into the disaster particularly noted the lax checks on the by-pass and the lack of regulations to maintain a good level of safety on the shopfloor. In the wake of Flixborough the Advisory Committee on Major Hazards (ACMH) was set up at the end of 1974.

The creation of the ACMH was the only major government action that can be directly attributed to Flixborough. The Seveso disaster in Italy, soon after Flixborough in July 1976, with the release of highly toxic gasses over a domestic area of Lombardy, is seen as being more cathartic, because of the greater health and environmental consequences, in shaping European Union directives.

Rather, Flixborough's importance lies in its influence on the creation of the Health and Safety Executive and the pursuant change in industry health and safety practices. Notably, for plant managers, Flixborough also opened the eyes of the public to the real dangers presented by heavy machinery and plant near residential areas.

The public debates, which followed the planning applications for chemical and engineering sites after Flixborough, took on a new intensity. Through media exposure people became concerned that the engineering industry was unable to guard against further catastrophies. The credibility of risk assessment was greatly damaged, as were the reputations of those carrying out the tests. It became clear that only third party checks could offer the gravitas to the safety of plant, which the public would trust.

The Health and Safety Executive was the body which offered this reassurance. The HSE took over developing new health and safety laws and standards and it became necessary to demonstrate good safety practices to obtain support from the HSE and planning authorities. Loss prevention techniques were also developed to ensure full consideration to the effects of possible incidents. These procedures and techniques, which are now second nature to the industry, were developed as a direct consequence of Flixborough.

The development of the HSE was a cornerstone in developing modern safety guidelines. The onus suddenly fell very much on third party commendation of health and safety standards. The court of inquiry following the disaster is notable in this instance for its criticism of weakness in process and plant design, a precursor to risk management procedures and inspection programmes.

The changes in attitudes to health and safety which Flixborough, and then Seveso, brought about are highlighted by the fact that before the Control of Industrial Major Accident Hazards (CIMAH) regulations were enacted in 1984, authorities had no record of where all hazardous sites were. The committee following Flixborough proposed the first identification of sites, along with measures to reduce the risk of major accidents and limit subsequent effects.

These facts seem incredible to today's engineering industry. We have become used to the `big-brother' culture of both national government legislation and the European directives, constantly checking that safe work practices are observed. Safety backups and preventative work practices are now endemic within both engineering and its related industries. The most recent EU directives have cemented this approach to health and safety through the onus on risk management.

The advent of risk management techniques over the last 25 years has been the most important step in making sure that disasters such as Flixborough cannot occur again. Risk management techniques have been developed to replace the imperfect risk assessment methods.

In the past businesses have been subject to regulations which have spelt out the requirements for users of work equipment in a very prescriptive manner. Every detail was stipulated, even down to particular requirements against specific industry sectors.

The anomalies that this system threw up, whereby equipment was both statutory and non-statutory depending on the work sector in which it was working, have been resolved.

The risk management process ideally involves an evaluation which both identifies and quantifies the severity of risk within a specific series of work functions. Having identified any high-risk functions, a systematic approach to reducing that risk is then implemented. This may involve third party inspections, engineering modifications, operative training or the instigation of safe systems of work.

To this end Flixborough has left us with a useful legacy of preventative work practices. We no longer wait for things to go wrong, rather we have developed techniques to minimise the risks posed by our workplaces. Fundamentally the risk management approach saves both time and money by reducing lost working hours.

With the European Union leading us firmly into a risk management based future, the lessons of Flixborough have perhaps been learned. Fines and prison sentences now await factory managers and operators who fail to follow the stringent health and safety procedures. Similarly, third party engineering inspection schemes, such as those offered by specialist engineering insurance companies, allow a reassurance of health and safety compatibility in all workplaces where engineering poses risks. PE

Phil Wright is chief engineer with Allianz Cornhill Engineering.