(52o) Blending Safety Barrier Concepts into More Contemporary Process Safety Management System

Since the introduction of Process Safety Management PSM as an effective way to prevent and control catastrophic incidents in hazardous industries, PSM was introduced as a number of management system elements, sometimes clustered in pillars.

This paper is trying to reintroduce PSM based on some modern concepts recently adopted in the industry such as safety barrier, digital transformation and cumulative risk. This paper offers readers a new way to see PSM as derivation of bowtie risk models, in which major hazardous events such as loss of containment are in the middle while causes/threats are on one end and ultimate consequences are on the other end. In between, safety barriers are mapped to achieve ALARP. These safety barriers are classified into hardware barrier, human barriers and critical processes. The proposed PSM aims to develop this model in an integrated and comprehensive way by identifying what can go wrong (hazardous events) in the facility and what can prevent this from happening (establishing and maintaining barriers). In this regard, the author replaced traditional PSM elements with 5 intertwined PSM frameworks surrounded with 5 PSM excellence enablers.

The 5 PSM frameworks are:

• RISK MANAGEMENT FRAMEWORK to establish and maintain organization capability in defining, assessing, and controlling different tiers of hazards & risk such as job and activities hazards, process hazards, operational risk and cumulative operational risk .
• TECHNICAL INTEGRITY FRAMEWORK to establish and maintain technical integrity of hardware safety barriers to meet required performance standards and how deviation will be managed.
• SAFE PRODUCTION FRAMEWORK to establish and maintain high standards and full discipline in conducting of operation, situational awareness and management of abnormal situations thus, Managing Human Barriers.
• COMPETENCY & TECHNICAL CAPABILITY FRAMEWORK to establish and maintain competencies, technical capabilities, technology inventories & skill pools for all levels in the organization to meet requirement of other frameworks.
• CRITICAL WORK PROCESSES FRAMEWORK which includes management element systems that supports both hardware and human barriers such Permit to Work PTW, Management of Change MOC, Incident Investigations, Emergency Planning, etc.

The 5 PSM excellence enablers are

• LEADERSHIP COMMITMENT: includes leadership models & concepts adopted, leadership expectations, leaders treats, definition of top performance in process safety, staff engagement routes, etc..
• GOVERNANCE AND ORGANIZATION CAPABILITIES: aims to map Process Safety functions across organization, Define process safety interfaces with other departments, infuse process safety duties into staff daily practices, break silos, etc..
• CULTURE MINDSHIFT: focus on ways and tools to achieve incremental improvement in process safety culture for all levels of organization from frontlines staff to senior leaders via different process safety initiatives and campaigns, cultures surveys and human behavior models.
• DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION: to harness the power of data integration in supporting risk-based decision making and eliminate human errors and waste time and standardize work methods.
• LEARNING ORGANIZATION: to establish institutional knowledge within organization, retain critical knowledge, capture, cascade & learnings.

For each PSM framework and PSM excellence enabler, the author will define purpose, scope, contents, methods & tools for implementation, deliverables with practical examples for effective adoption.