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August 8, 2010

Where does the buck stop in Process Safety Management?

I have been viewing the numerous developments in process safety in India with great interest. The Indian Chemical Council has taken a big interest in Process Safety and is collaborating with the Center for Chemical Process Safety of the US. While it is good that a great awareness of Process Safety Management is being created in India, where does the buck stop as far as Process Safety Management goes? The composition board of directors of many chemical organisations in India are changing with fewer and fewer companies having technically qualified people at the helm.With due respect to the immense experience that other directors bring, I see an erosion in technical competence at the board level. While risk based process safety does bring in process safety metrics to the board's attention, it needs technical competence to analyse these metrics. Ultimately, the culture of the organisation trickles down from the decisions that the board takes. What is the long term solution to this issue? No amount of management systems is going to avoid a catastrophic incident. They will warn you adequately before a big incident happens, but unless someone at the board level is competent to analyse these warnings, you cannot prevent the incident. It boils down to basic human behaviour. Is a director on the board going to pay more attention to what another technically competent director is saying, or to the various process safety metrics he sees displayed but may not fully understand? I leave it to you to decide...
Meanwhile read an interesting article in the Fortune magazine in this link.

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