Losing sight of process safety?

London – Earlier this week almost 100 offshore workers were evacuated from a North Sea platform, located around 100 miles north-east of Shetland.

The measure was precautionary and no injuries or environmental impact were reported by TAQA, owner of the Cormorant Alpha rig, which produces 90,000 barrels of oil a day.

The incident, however, is a timely reminder of how easy it is to lose sight of the hazardous nature of many of the activities carried out within the process industries.

Process safety has traditionally risen sharply to the top of the agenda In the wake of major disasters, such as Deepwater Horizon - only to gradually slip back once all the ‘low-hanging-fruit’ improvements have been made, and other business priorities kick in.

Thankfully, this dangerous pattern has been recognised by safety regulators and within industry: leading recently to initiatives that aim to permanently embed safety culture within process manufacturing organisations.

An example here is the Process Safety Management (PSM) initiative in the UK - led by Cogent and the National Skils Academy Process Industries (NSAPI) - that takes a top-down, management-led approach to improving process safety.

NSAPI director Neil Smith reports that this standards-based approach is “really starting to resonate,” with around 600 industry leaders and senior managers from 100 of the most hazardous sites in the UK investing time in process safety leadership training courses in 2012.

However, with around 1,300 high hazard sites in the UK there is still a long way to go - a point reinforced by the recent Maintec survey (see story) which found that pressure to reduce UK plant downtime is threatening health & safety during maintenance.

The survey also identified some worrying attitudes among employees, including those who saw health & safety as ‘a necessary evil’ or ‘a fuss about nothing’.

Clearly, many managers and workers still need a wake-up call, if they are not to cross the often fine line between minor incidents and having a major accident at their facilities.