Managing process safety in the round

Anyone working in regulated higher hazard industries will already be familiar with the need to manage process risks differently from occupational safety risks. But even if that isn’t a regulatory requirement for your role, you should still consider the concepts in process safety management (PSM) because they may improve your overall performance overall, not just reduce the risk of loss. 

And it’s also worth bearing in mind that, although it’s referred to as process safety, we are talking about environmental protection as well.

The key steps in PSM follow from the potential for serious harm if operations don’t go as planned – harm to people, the environment or property. This might be due to the hazardous nature and quantity of the materials used, or the proximity of people or things which could come to harm in the local environment or public domain. But once we can imagine that harm, we need to define what the correct process looks like, to reduce the chances of it happening.

Consider the concepts in process safety management (PSM) because they may improve your overall performance overall, not just reduce the risk of loss

We can manage what must go right through procedures, our people’s knowledge and engineered systems and each of those approaches should be considered for aspects that prevent loss of control and for things that reduce the consequences where control might have been lost. Each of these barriers or layers of protection gives more strength in depth.

Some will argue that high hazard processes should be engineered to minimise the need for human intervention. This is a particularly important approach to keep people away from hazards, but remember that any engineered system has human designers, limits of operation and must be maintained. We’ll always need some people, so what do you know about your own and your colleagues’ competence?

When broken down, competence should include knowledge ranging from the material hazards through proper understanding of equipment design and operation, to the need for inspections and maintenance. It should also cover how to recognise when things aren’t going as expected and what to do then.

Drawing these subjects together under the banner of PSM can give an opportunity to help people to understand the interactions between these aspects and how they deliver the outcome of safe and environmentally secure operations; it also allows consideration of all organisational levels from the most senior to the least.

Many organisations have been prompted to embark on training or education programmes to build competent teams but these programmes are sometimes once-off, sometimes covering much of the organisation but potentially missing newcomers or organisational change. This can also fail to account for physical changes to equipment or changes to business model.

Most safety-management theories recognise that barriers will begin to degrade and competence is no different; other priorities come up, training budgets can be reallocated, a critical mass of knowledge can remain but capability is slipping away all the while.

Management can find out about this degradation through audit, but it can also be discovered through incident – usually adverse events, occasionally serious. Organisations that deliver ongoing competence updates to their people will reduce the risk of the latter and probably reap benefits of more efficient operations too as teams revisit the ‘right way’ and the reasons behind that.

Once we can imagine that harm, we need to define what the correct process looks like, to reduce the chances of it happening

Senior management teams should ask themselves a number of important questions. Firstly, am I (still) competent in process safety management as it relates to my business? Secondly, how do I know my teams are (still) competent? And thirdly, what are our processes for maintaining competence over time and through change?

If the answer to the first question is “I’m not sure”, this can be a really good place to start. After all, what interests the leaders will eventually interest the whole organisation.

Richard Roff is chair of the Process Safety Management Competence Programme Board (PSMCPB)