(516f) Learnings from Five Years of Collaboration between Academia and Industry on Delivering Process Safety Competency Development Programs for Process Safety Engineers.

Process Safety Competency is one of the elements of a healthy and successful process safety management system. Assessing the level of process safety competency, identifying the gaps and developing programs to build robust and effective competency in an organization are challenging and remain to date one of the biggest challenges that the process industry faces.

This presentation will share the experience of the intense collaboration between an academic institution, the Mary Kay O’Connor Process Safety Center (MKOPSC) of Texas A&M University at Qatar and a major multinational chemical manufacturing company, Saudi Basic Industries Corporation (SABIC) for the development and implementation of a comprehensive and long-term Process Safety Competency Development Program (PSCDP) for process safety engineers.

The presentation outlines a description of the sequencial structure, technical contents and delivery strategies of the program. The methodology for the evaluation of the engineers’ performances and progress and the use of such information for continuous improvement will be discussed.

The results and direct impact of five years of implementation of the program (2017-2021; 101 engineers for 145 in-class teaching days) from the trainee engineers’ stand point and their practices of process safety in their respective sites will be shared. In addition, the impact and benefits of such demanding program on both the company and the academic institutions in their respective approaches and practices/teaching of process safety will be discussed.

The presenter will share his thoughts on the lessons learned from this experience from a faculty perspective on how academia could improve the teaching of process safety and strengthen the role it plays in helping industry tackle the challenge of competency in process safety.