PSM is an administrative control over process safety. The elements may vary from 14 to 30 and above but finally it is an administrative control. Human beings take decisions that can have an effect on PSM. For example, the CSB has released the safety video of the Bayer Crop science explosion where it mentions an interlock was bypassed by operators with the knowledge of the manager. Whatever systems you have, there will be a time, when under pressure for production, mistakes can happen and the administrative control fails. Behaviour based safety, developing process safety culture, operational discipline all are dependent on the Human Being. Especially the ones at the top…
Why do the same mistakes keep happening over and over again? It’s because of a basic human trait ….. if nothing has happened for so many years, one does not expect to see anything bad in the future, too.
What you do not see may cost you terribly!! Whose job is it to see that the human being at the operational level does not deviate from set procedures? It’s the job of the top management. But it’s a chicken and egg situation. Today’s top management in Chemical Plants are under severe pressure themselves and often loose sight of what is going on at the ground level. Whenever a new system that brings in top management involvement is implemented, I often see, that initially, everything is working all right and top management are focused on process safety. As time gets by, and people (including top management) and priorities change, the effectiveness of PSM changes, too. I feel that the only way to make PSM work is through effective legal enforcement. In this connection, I am happy to see in the CSB video that the Costa County officials have been able to bring down incidents by effective auditing of PSM systems.
I do not see this happening in India where PSM is not even Mandatory! Let’s not wait for another Bhopal to occur. Do write in your comments.
You have said it right. I fully agree with your point of opinion. We always say that system should drive the people, whereas it happens quite frequently that people should drive the system. The Indian conditions in
ReplyDeletethe present scenario is like that only. Let us hope that conditions in
India will change soon to know the importance of Process safety in Chemical
Industries.
As you rightly said that anything which is driven from the top gets materialised. In the indann context most of the PSM compliance is merely a paperwork. To get certification and some rewards in the form of less insurance premiums etc. But to develop a culture for safety and PSM and also the operational discipline we need time but the chemical industries are not giving that much time to establish one system and then go for another one. They want all the cerfication or the inplementation of the systems in one night and hence they are top driven. But they are not driven on the ground level and hence lose the sheen and the devine cause to implement the systems.
ReplyDeleteLegalising PSM will only catalyse the paperwork and system certification but the real implementation means sustaining the systems, proper auditing the system time to time internally and by a third eye.