I had recently posted this question in a forum: "In many of the process incidents I investigate, I see an eerie
connection to what we had done wrong ages ago when we started our
careers. This was a time in the 80's. For all you folks of that vintage,
are you experiencing the same? A feeling of Deja Vu?"
Here are some of the replies:
"Personally, I feel that things are very different now than when I
started my engineering career. When I started in 1977, I was told that I
should have 10% of my time each week free to keep up with the latest
technical journals and research topics that would help me learn how to
improve my skills. If I didn't have that time, I was to discuss it with
my supervisor. Try that in today's world.
I worked as a process engineer for a major chemical company in the
early 1980s. Any project involved multiple meetings with various
departments and several levels of management. Then I had to hand write a
proposal and get it typed up. It had to include what we were planning
to do, why we wanted to do it, what other options had been considered,
potential downsides and hazards, mitigations for those hazards, and any
other information that I thought was necessary to get my boss, and
possibly his boss, to sign off without having to rewrite the proposal
and send it back to typing.
Today, most of this type of project work is handled with computer
programs and emails. This seems to have greatly reduced the amount of
face-to-face time that people spend on projects. This means that
younger engineers do not get the benefit of all the things that the
older engineers have seen in their careers. This may what you mean by
making the same mistakes that were made back then. I can still remember
several little tidbits that I learned just sitting in meetings with
people who had been around awhile.
Based on what I see in MOCs, we are not documenting things nearly as
completely as we did back then. Maybe I just didn't want to have to
rewrite the proposal, but I tried to be very thorough with my proposals,
which meant a lot of research and discussion up front. I do not see
that level of detail in most of the proposals that come across my desk
now."
"I write from Canada. We may be typical, or we may be unique in the following challenges:
- Downsizing in the 80's and early 90's reduced numbers of engineers,
amount of engineering supervision, formal training, access to journals
at work, and conference attendance. Far fewer well-rounded engineers in
the 45-60 age group now work in Canada because of that attrition and
lack of development and mentoring
- Computer use in university courses increased in the same time
period. Answers came out of the computers, rather than working through
the problems on paper. A certain loss of the "feel" for the right
answer tends to plague our younger engineers--there is a tendency to
trust what the computer results say without the same level of
engineering judgement that people had to have in "the old days"
- In Canada, due to the boom and bust nature of the oil and gas
business, when Canadian-trained engineers can't fill the job market,
engineers are hired from other countries. While the education received
may be comparable to Canada's, proper understanding of the severe
challenges of process facilities in very cold climates is often missing,
and things aren't built properly to get through the first winter
- Pursuant to the previous point, familiarity with Canadian &
provincial codes, standards, practices, and environmental legislation
can be lacking in foreign-hired engineers, which can mean re-design is
required. Re-design can introduce process hazards late in the design
stages.
- The "lean and mean" mandate of many of the operating companies
drives projects to be "fast-tracked" as a rule, rather than the
exception. Equipment is ordered before the design has gone through a
proper process hazards analysis review. Furthermore, serious errors in
design may or may not be discovered during the PHA because it, in turn
is fast-tracked.
- Fast-tracking projects and finding errors in the design at a late
stage drives band-aid solutions to address the hazards that are
found--typically, more alarms and emergency shutdowns and interlocks.
This drives more maintenance costs and the need for more instrument
technicians.
- The "lean and mean" mandate of the operating companies limits the
numbers of instrument technicians employed. Everybody ends up working
more overtime, being tired, lacking ownership, and incidents are more
likely to occur.
Bottom line: I agree. If we don't see more process safety incidents
in Canada over the next decade, it will be because of very good
fortune. On the upside, our universities are including more training in
process safety, and superior PHA tools such as PFFM are available--the
question is, will we have the courage and commitment to apply them"
Contribute to the surviving victims of Bhopal by buying my book "Practical Process Safety Management"
