Managing Process Safety in Facilities Design

Process safety practices and process safety management (PSM) systems have been applied since the various incidents and accidents in the refining and petrochemical industries over many years. In the US, the Center for Chemical Process Safety created risk-based process safety as the framework for the next generation of PSM. In petroleum refining and petrochemical industries, companies are required by law to have occupational safety programs, with a focus on personal safety, as the focus of these programs is to prevent harm to personnel from workplace accidents such as fall, cuts, strains, and so on. Petroleum refineries are one of the major energy-consuming industries that contribute to a major proportion of the production cost. Energy in a typical refinery is 60% of variable costs and 1% improvement in energy equals to ~$650,000 year saving for a 100,000 bpsd refinery.

Process safety challenges for SMEs in China

Presented on Wednesday 22 May: Session 22 The Process Safety Management discipline is still misunderstood and deemed complex despite the efforts and progress that have been made over the past decades in the energy industry. This is important as the energy industry turns towards the energy transition and needs to remember the fundamentals of managing process safety risks in emerging technologies. At Origin Energy, leadership, risk management and learning are tightly connected when it comes to ensuring good process safety. In this context, Origin Energy’s Integrated Gas Business Unit has implemented Process Safety Management initiatives over the last 5 years grouped under three Process Safety Management strategic pillars: empowered process safety leadership; open-minded learning culture and best practice process hazard management. The aim of these initiatives was to develop a heightened process safety culture across the business unit. The approach used was to demystify process safety concepts to generate engagement and ownership at all levels. This was supplemented with implementing a companywide Engineering and Technical Community of Practice to enable sharing of technical learning across boundaries and building strong process safety risk awareness foundations supported by a Process Hazard Analysis Revalidation program. To access the Oral Presentation click the link on the right. To read the full paper click here

While modern process safety can be dated back to E.I. duPont in the early 1800s with the building of black powder plants including separation distances, and blast zones, the management of process safety has come a long way. Despite this, however, we have continued to see many catastrophic incidents occur, across a range of industries. There have been significant learning opportunities from the catastrophes, but are we actually applying the learnings? Exploring the past 40 years history shows a number of landmark process safety events. These events have not only changed our state of knowledge for managing process safety but have also resulted in standards and legislative change in multiple jurisdictions. This article explores the significant learnings that came out of the various landmark process safety events and the impact these changes have had on how process safety is managed today. Incidents considered as case studies in this article include the following:Flixborough UK (1974), Seveso Italy (1976), Bhopal India (1984), Piper Alpha UK (1988), Longford Australia (1998), Texas City Refinery USA (2005), Montara Australia (2009), Macondo USA (2010), and Pike River New Zealand (2010). © 2015 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Process Saf Prog 35: 165–170, 2016

Beach Energy Limited (referred as Beach Energy or Beach) is an ASX-listed exploration and production company headquartered in Adelaide, South Australia. Founded in 1961, Beach produces oil and gas from five onshore and offshore basins across Australia and New Zealand. During its most recent growth phase, Beach added a number of assets to its portfolio that were originally developed and operated by companies with different management systems, standards and reporting requirements. Over the past 5 years Beach has been – and continues to be – on a journey of learning, developing and refining its systems and standards for reporting process safety performance and integrating these within a ‘one Beach’ philosophy. This paper describes the current stage of this evolution in measuring, reporting and managing process safety performance at Beach, presents some of the key learnings to date, in addition to outlining the next steps Beach is taking on this journey. The paper covers the following: (1) experience with IOGP RP 456 Tier KPI model and current main KPIs in use; (2) application to projects, drilling campaigns and operating assets; (3) challenges in gathering data and event classification; (4) importance of getting safety critical equipment selection right; (5) communicating large and complex KPIs to a varied audience; (6) learning and improving process safety performance and systems based on KPIs; (7) new approaches to reporting health of process safety barriers aligned to IOGP RP544 categories using simplified bowtie Major Accident Event dashboards; and (8) integration of process safety management within the Beach Operations Excellence Management System. The key conclusions are that measuring process safety performance requires dedicated effort and consensus across all stakeholders on the most appropriate way to measure performance. Reporting needs a positive and collaborative culture to have the right impact. Managing performance must be based on objective evidence and careful analysis of the data. Achieving effective and efficient process safety measurement, reporting and management is a multi-year journey of continual improvement.

With the popularization and application of chemical process safety management (PSM) systems in the chemical industry, the use of such systems in China has become the focus of a large volume of research. In this article, 12 elements included in the current Chinese PSM system are divided into four stages from a structural point of view. This division will be helpful in the follow‐up analysis. After a careful analysis of the evaluation results for one PSM pilot study in Nanjing, some correlations have been found between the results of the elemental evaluation. Small‐ and medium‐sized chemical plants make up a large proportion of Chinese chemical plants and many chemical accidents take place in these plants, so a simplified PSM system in practical operation need to be found. Based on a previous PSM structural analysis, the secondary elements of the PSM system can be removed. This allows researchers to avoid the traditional method of analyzing PSM elements individually. In the concrete analysis process, a theoretical analysis of the correlation degree between elements can be combined with the results of accident investigations. The simplified Chinese PSM system consists of four core elements: Process safety information, process hazard analysis, training, and emergency management. Based on the current applications of these four core elements in China, a consideration of correlations between these elements is used to make several suggestions for improving China's PSM systems. © 2017 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Process Saf Prog 36: 378–381, 2017

In 2020, a fire and explosion accident occurred in Taiwan because of the reverse flow of high‐pressure recycle gas. This accident resulted in three minor injuries and caused the Taiwanese government to instruct the top three chemical groups in Taiwan to conduct procedural hazard and operability (HAZOP) studies in addition to normal HAZOP studies. The cause analysis based on the accident timeline and cause factor chart indicated that improper control of the protection logic bypass and the lack of four process safety management (PSM) elements, namely mechanical integrity, process safety information (PSI), operating procedures, and process hazard analysis (PHA), were the root causes of the aforementioned accident. The deficiencies leading to accidents are related to planning problems in PSM promotion but unrelated to the implementation of PSM programs. Maintenance processes should be evaluated and developed according to PHA results or equipment structure to guarantee equipment integrity. The incompatibility of process chemicals with pipeline materials should be considered; then, the construction materials mentioned in PSI should be extended to those of pipelines, not just equipment. In addition to the hazards of normal operations, those of non‐routine operations should be identified to ensure the completeness of the PSM program. Protection logic bypass should be appropriately controlled, and a complete safety evaluation must be conducted before resetting the initiated protection logic. A majority of the deficiencies identified in this study exist in most Taiwanese chemical companies, including the leading ones performing PSM. The lessons learned from the aforementioned accident provide advance information that can be used to develop an improved PSM system.

A comparative analysis of process safety management (PSM) systems in the process industry

Many industrial sites struggle to achieve consistently strong business performance in Process Safety Management (PSM). For these work sites, leading indicators may show that there is good participation in process safety activities, but unfortunately, the process safety incident rate remains above targets. Oftentimes, these sites must be very reactive as incident follow‐up consumes much of their available resources and incident avoidance continues to be elusive. This paper discusses new approaches used to break free from lackluster PSM performance. These new approaches are designed to maximize worker engagement which in turn will boost the culture and lead to a step‐change improvement in PSM performance. The new approaches incorporate the Swiss cheese model at the center of a framework that is easily understood by all workers. Workers' knowledge of PSM and how it pertains to their specific role is then strengthened through routine sharing of external events. Workers are then encouraged to apply learnings to their work and they are rewarded for breakthroughs in hazard identification or mitigation. These approaches have not only received applause from regulators but have also been successfully used to break out of mediocrity and attain “best‐in‐class” PSM performance, as measured by API RP 754 criteria.

Application of Bayesian network and artificial intelligence to reduce accident/incident rates in oil & gas companies

Many major accidents have taken place in the chemical and petrochemical industry over the past 40 years (e.g. Bhopal (India, 1984), Texas City (USA, 2005)), which have been key driving forces for issuing new regulations (governments), publishing standards (industry groups), developing policies (companies), and ultimately for improving Loss Prevention strategies and Process Safety Management (PSM). On this context, a key standard is the OSHA PSM (29 CFR 1910.119), a process-based program aiming at preventing or minimizing the consequences of catastrophic releases of toxic, reactive, flammable, or explosive chemicals. The present paper focuses on the results from several PSM audits performed between 2010 and 2016, at several different Chemical Process Industry (CPI) facilities. On the one hand, we have evaluated how well these facilities complied with the requirements of the OSHA PSM Standard. On the other hand, the data from the audit findings has been compiled and statistically processed in order to compare the main common findings with the results of those analyzed by OSHA's Refinery and Chemical National Emphasis Programs (NEP) in 2012. Key audit findings from the CPI are a valued source of information for understanding current safety weaknesses. The lessons learned from this study help us to identify operational discipline and process safety leadership and culture benefits towards minimizing or avoiding audit findings, and therefore, to contributing to an optimized and sustainable Process Safety management system.

Guidance to improve the effectiveness of process safety management systems in operating facilities

Process Safety has now become one of the key topics in industry. Process safety differs from personal safety and has to be dealt differently. ADGAS has taken initiative to lead in Process Safety Management by taking different multi-directional approach. The main objective is to enhance awareness towards Process Safety and develop Process Safety Culture within ADGAS & ADNOC Group of Companies whereby mitigation & elimination of potential hazards is embedded in the attitude of every individual.

Process safety is related to leak prevention, oil spills, monitoring of equipment damage, overpressure, excess temperature, corrosion, metal fatigue, and other similar conditions. Besides, operations are related to productivity and risk management, so it is essential to monitor the process in depth. This paper is focusing on risk management of the downstream segment on the priority element of Process Safety Management (PSM). Based on research, Mechanical Integrity is the most critical element in PSM that have to be focused. The aspect of essential reliability of equipment, in this case, the compressor becomes vital to prevent shutdown/trip and unplanned maintenance, which will have an impact on oil and gas production. Historical failure data and support that include structured and unstructured data from the reciprocating compressor approximately from 2014 until 2019 will be collected. It will use to identify the damage patterns and reliability rates of the equipment. The regression value will be calculated by R as Big Data Analytics Software to determine whether Weibull distribution is sufficient. By using Weibull analysis, we can conclude that it will be more useful to use preventive maintenance as the first barrier from getting fail.

The general objective of this study was to establish the influence of project management practices on implementation of donor funded water and sanitation projects in the Central Rift region, Kenya. The study specifically sought to establish the influence of stakeholder involvement, project team training, monitoring and evaluation and risk management on implementation of donor funded water and sanitation projects in the Central Rift region, Kenya. The study was anchored on four theories, namely; stakeholder theory, team theory, dynamic capabilities theory and the theory of resilience. For purposes of this study, a descriptive survey design was employed. The target population were all 160 project members comprising project managers, consultants, project implementation teams and task managers from donor agencies in 16 donor funded water and sanitation projects in the central rift region. Using statistical formulae, a sample of 62 elements was obtained. Purposive sampling was then used in targeting the said staff in each of the donor funded water and sanitation projects. This study used questionnaires in collecting data from the target group. Pilot-test was conducted to check the reliability of the instruments used for data collection. Data was analyzed using both descriptive and inferential statistics with the aid of the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 25.0. The study revealed that when all the variables for project management practices, stakeholder involvement, project team training, project evaluation and risk management, were multi regressed against the dependent variable, project implementation, there was an observable model of good fit at 99.6% hence, a good predicator of project implementation if cumulatively practiced. The study further found that stakeholder involvement is a significant predicator (p=0.046<.05) of project implementation in donor funded water and sanitation projects in the Central Rift region, Kenya. Further, the study established that project team training is an insignificant positive predicator (p=0.800 >.05) of project implementation. Project evaluation is a significant predictor (p=0.024<.05) of project implementation and role risk management was found to be a significant predictor (p= 0.21 <05) project implementation. Regression analysis revealed that risk management variable (β = 7.633) has the greatest influence, followed by stakeholder engagement variable (β = 1.192) then followed by evaluation variable (β = 0.116) and lastly project team training variable (β = -0.672).Therefore, the study recommended that, project implementation teams for donor funded water and sanitation projects in Kenya should emphasize more on project risk management as it has the most significant influence on project implementation. The study recommends that the donors of the water projects should sustain, project team training, as much it does not significantly influence project implementation, but it contributes significantly to the overall model fit. The findings of this study will be significant to the government since it aims to stimulate economic growth through attaining value for money for funds sourced from donors. The study will also provide opportunities for project managers to identify key project management practices and how they influence implementation of donor funded water and sanitation projects.