(18c) From Fear to Understanding: moving Process Safety Focus Towards Value Creation and Profitability
AIChE Spring Meeting and Global Congress on Process Safety
2023
2023 Spring Meeting and 19th Global Congress on Process Safety
Management Division
Role of Leadership in Process Safety in Evolving Organizational Culture
Monday, March 13, 2023 - 1:30pm to 2:00pm
The OSHA Process Safety Management Regulation was introduced in 1992. It was developed to help plants, process, and people to be able to work more safely. However, the resulting message has often been misunderstood, with greater focus being applied to avoiding fines than generating better plant safety, thus creating a culture of fear, rather than improvement. Regulatory compliance is of course critical, but its application without consideration may not read through to true safety and operational performance improvement, or to the benefits of greater profitability that can result from a well implemented system.
This presentation explores the history of process industry incidents and their causes while drawing parallels to the early days of the automotive industry and their own struggles with safety. Much can be learned from that evolution, and it mirrors many of the same challenges we face regarding process safety. By utilizing inherently safe design concepts with better capturing of operational data including increased diagnostics, safety and business decisions can be made more quickly and efficiently. This leads to inherent regulatory compliance and increased business improvement.