Process Safety and Asset Integrity

Maintaining asset integrity is one of the key areas of process safety. As I observe more and more competition in the Indian Chemical Industry,I am beginning to observe a lack of long term focus towards maintaining asset integrity. With current high attrition rates in the chemical industry, it is only natural that a plant manager tends to "adjust" his focus on maintaining asset integrity to ensure that nothing happens during his tenure.This is also mentioned in the investigation report of the BP Texas refinery incident.Many organizations are implementing process safety management systems without a long term approach. Such systems will bring in more complacency than doing good.Another worrying factor is the lack of competency to manage asset integrity programs. I have observed many "in house" asset integrity teams influenced by their organizational culture in such a way that they get blinded to reality.Top management feels everything is hunky dory when suddenly something fails and everybody wakes up!The UK HSE chair has said "Never allow short-term business pressures to blind you to the real and potentially devastating human and business consequences of neglecting process safety and asset integrity"
I will end with a joke - I was chairing a HAZOP study for a Bio Ethanol Plant coming up in South Africa when one of the participants jokingly asked me "Does'nt all your negative thinking affect you?". Well, Process Safety is not about negativity, but about worrying about things that are so obvious to you but not obvious to others!