Walk the Line - Chemical Processing

 http://www.chemicalprocessing.com/articles/2016/process-safety-walk-the-line/?show=all

Contribute to the surviving victims of Bhopal by buying my book "Practical Process Safety Management"

Achieving zero accidents

Article by Chevron on how they are achieving zero accidents in this link 

Contribute to the surviving victims of Bhopal by buying my book "Practical Process Safety Management"

Common sense is not so common

 I was chatting with a Plant Manager recently when he lamented the fact that his operators believed the instrumentation rather than common sense. A pump was not delivering the required flow, even though the current drawn by the motor was normal. The operators checked the position of the recirculation control valve in the DCS and it indicated close. They then requested maintenance to replace the pump twice but the problem remained. Finally they found out that the recirculation valve was open in the field though it was indicating close in the DCS.
I see similar things happen in complicated PSM systems where poeple loose sight of what is the objective of PSM. PSM is common sense applied to keep the hazardous chemicals where they belong.


Contribute to the surviving victims of Bhopal by buying my book "Practical Process Safety Management"

Management of Change or Change of Management?

In 1999, when I was carrying out a PSM audit, we were auditing a maintenance mechanic. I was asking whether he can explain what is the meaning of management of change. He replied that when his company was recently taken over by another company, that is management of change!
Are you carrying out MOC for change in Management?

 
Contribute to the surviving victims of Bhopal by buying my book "Practical Process Safety Management"

Learn from a Safety Guru | Chemical Processing

Learn from a Safety Guru | Chemical Processing

Contribute to the surviving victims of Bhopal by buying my book "Practical Process Safety Management"

How speaking up can save lives - BBC UK

Excellent article from BBC UK How speaking up can save lives

Contribute to the surviving victims of Bhopal by buying my book "Practical Process Safety Management"

Leadership Lessons from Retired Air Force General Charles V. Ickes from Crane Institute Certification.

 There are excellent leadership lessons to be learnt (applicable for process safety, too) in the following link:
Leadership Lessons from a Top Gun: Retired Air Force General Charles V. Ickes from Crane Institute Certification.

 
Contribute to the surviving victims of Bhopal by buying my book "Practical Process Safety Management"

Golden Rules of Total

 Total, the oil and gas multinational has Golden rules for safety in its website which can be accessed in this link

 
Contribute to the surviving victims of Bhopal by buying my book "Practical Process Safety Management"

Management decision during crisis

Continuing with Fukushima, a very interesting read on Fukushima and management decisions!
http://www.nikkeibp.co.jp/rebuild/en/article_09/index_03.shtml

 
Contribute to the surviving victims of Bhopal by buying my book "Practical Process Safety Management"

Walking the talk - the most effective way to sustain safety culture

I always say that if the behaviour of top management is right, the behaviour of the others will follow. This is beautifully articulated in an article by Don Ritz titled "Walking the talk on courageous safety leadership". This is worth reading by all senior management. I have been lucky to work in the Middle East where this was practiced in letter and in spirit. One day, when I was working in the plant, me and an operator were up on the compressor deck. The Vice President, Operations, was walking into the plant and he could not see us, as we were at second floor level. There was nobody else around. As we observed him, he paused by the lube oil console at the ground floor. The console floor was dirty. He took a service water hose, cleaned the area with the water hose and rolled back the hose on to its stand and carried on his walk. It made a big impact on both of us. Developing a good safety culture does not need consultants. It is simple and it needs deep rooted commitment.

Read the article by Don Ritz in this link.


Contribute to the surviving victims of Bhopal by buying my book "Practical Process Safety Management"

Repost - Process Safety in the 21st Century

I had originally posted this in 2010. Four years later, some of my predictions are coming true!!! Guess I should become an astrologer...

Process safety in the 21st Century(ORIGINALLY POSTED ON NOVEMBER 11th, 2010)

Having spent 30 years in the chemical industry, I am trying to hazard a guess on the direction of process safety in the 21st century:
1.The human being will become more and more the focus in process safety. Technical competency of individuals is fast decreasing and job hopping means that process safety knowledge is fragmented in an organisation.
2.Plants are becoming more and more hi tech with control systems and instruments with wireless technology and “smart” technology while the human being is becoming “unsmarter”.
3.As organisation become larger and larger, the management of process safety is getting lost somewhere in between the layers of communication. While leading process safety indicators are good in highlighting problem areas, the focus on these indicators is also human dependent and with directors on boards of companies changing, this focus gets shifted from time to time.
4.There will be Low frequency High Potential accidents happening in large organisations. The BP case is just a teaser. Even in organisations that manage their process safety closely, one slip is enough.Managing to avoid this “slip” will become tougher and tougher in this “flat world”.
5.Fortunately or unfortunately we are in an age of rapid technology change. Plant operators should be careful to select the technologies they need and more importantly to “deselect” the technologies they do not need. One mans bread may be the other man’s burnt toast!
6.To become more and more competitive, organizations are cutting costs. While there is nothing wrong in cutting costs, I see a drastic decrease in in-house competency to assess the technical issues while cutting costs.
7.There will be a number of security issues with chemical plants as control technologies change.
8.Competency of people is becoming a major issue. Simulator training of plant operators may become a legal requirement soon in many countries!

I do not want to bore you with this monologue, but how do we avoid this? Top management must continually have a feel of what is going on at the ground level. There is no better solution that the old fashioned way of walking the talk by periodically meeting people at ground zero and observing what their problems are! I’m signing off…..!

 Contribute to the surviving victims of Bhopal by buying my book "Practical Process Safety Management"

Improve Safety Despite Limited Resources

Improve Safety Despite Limited Resources

 Contribute to the surviving victims of Bhopal by buying my book "Practical Process Safety Management"

SAFETY:The drilling industry's explosion problem- article from eenews.net

 SAFETY:The drilling industry's explosion problem- article from eenews.net

Contribute to the surviving victims of Bhopal by buying my book "Practical Process Safety Management"

The challenge of change in Engineering by Phil Hopkins

 Phil Hopkins of Penspen Integrity, UK, has written an incisive and humorous article on  "The challenge of change in Engineering". It is worth reading by all chemical engineers.

Read the full article in this link

Contribute to the surviving victims of Bhopal by buying my book "Practical Process Safety Management"

We are like this only........

Recently I was travelling on a highway which is notorious for accidents. The company car which had picked me up had 4 other employees in it. Only the driver and me (sitting in the rear seat) were wearing the seat belts. I finished my work in the company (which has many plants at various locations) and was travelling back with the corporate safety head of the company along with me. He was not wearing his seat belt!! The driver was rash but none objected till I told him to drive safely. Guess you know where the problem is!!
Why are we like this??

Contribute to the surviving victims of Bhopal by buying my book "Practical Process Safety Management"

Responsible Care - reinforcing public opinion

The Indian Chemical Council is promoting Responsible Care and trying to motivate organisations into obtaining the RC logo it awards. This is a good initiative but the public needs to have faith in the process. The public are always sceptical of any self regulation by an industry body as they feel that it will be compromised. I have a few suggestions to the ICC to help to make RC more acceptable by the public:

1. The logo should be awarded with the condition that it will be withdrawn if a fatal or reportable accident occurs after awarding the logo. The company then has to go through the whole process for obtaining the logo. ICC must not only publicise the list of companies that have been awarded the logo, but also publicise the names of companies for which the logo has been withdrawn.
2. The best practices of every company that has been awarded the logo should be publicly displayed in ICC website for anyone to emulate.
3. One of the conditions of awarding the logo should be contribution to a fund to improve safety in the SME sector of chemical industries, including fireworks industries. The contribution could be fixed as a percentage of turnover.The improvement of safety in the SME sector of chemical industries should be taken up by ICC themselves and this must be publicised.


Contribute to the surviving victims of Bhopal by buying my book "Practical Process Safety Management"

Technology is not a complete substitute

The saga of the missing Malaysian airlines MH370 flight highlights the fact that technology is an enabler but it cannot override the human. The way in which vendors are hard selling process safety technology these days worries me. A typical case is SIL rated instrumented systems. While the statistics and numbers sound very good, no vendor is gong to tell you about the life cycle needs and cost of maintaining these systems.

Nowadays, I also see many cases of the operation staff  left out of the design loop. The net result is that the operator gets a system which leads to work overload during emergencies. Then the vendor hard sells "alarm management software"!!
Somewhere in our journey of process safety management we have forgotten Dr Trevor Kletz's inherent safety philosophy of "keeping it simple".
I often see complicated PSM systems in many "World Class" companies. These systems are "managed" by separate PSM cells.....have we forgotten that the owner of PSM is operations? I often see the systems getting more complicated because the PSM cell needs to justify their existence! (My due apologies if I have hurt anyone).

Having had the fortune to learn about process safety when the word was not in "fashion" , I pray the post bhopal generation of chemical engineers realise that managing process safety is not only about technology........design it for humans who make mistakes.....keep it simple and easy to understand.


Contribute to the surviving victims of Bhopal by buying my book "Practical Process Safety Management"

The GM recall - what are the lessons in process safety culture?

You must be reading the news about the recall of 2.6 million cars GM made due to a problem in the ignition switch which could shut off the car while driving, disable the airbag, power steering and anti lock brakes. However it is reported that GM took 10 years from the time the problem was discovered and recalling the cars to fix the problem. Meanwhile 13 deaths have been attributed to this.
 In the ongoing Senate hearing, the recently appointed CEO of GM Ms Barra told the subcommittee, "that the new GM is more "focused on the customer" compared to a "cost culture" years ago at the automaker."

What is the commonality between a giant automotive maker and PSM? The answer is "cost culture". Beware of the cost virus in your organisation's PSM system.It can cause deadly accidents.
  
Read about the problem and recall in this link
Read about the testimony of GM Chief in this link

 Contribute to the surviving victims of Bhopal by buying my book "Practical Process Safety Management"

Role of HR in Safety

Mr M.K.Rao, Executive Director of India Glycols Limited has written a good article on "Role of HR in Safety". You can read the article in this link.  My thanks to him.

Contribute to the surviving victims of Bhopal by buying my book "Practical Process Safety Management"

Process safety - voluntary or regulatory?

I read an interesting editorial in the "Record" about the above subject. Worth reading in this link.


Contribute to the surviving victims of Bhopal by buying my book "Practical Process Safety Management"