(40bd) API Process Safety Site Assessment Program (PSSAP): Helping Operators See Their Blind Spots

Process safety is managed be a complex set of management systems that collectively address risk in a sites processes. After many events in industry, the American Petroleum Institute (API) and the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers (AFPM) joined forces to create the Process Safety Site Assessment Program (PSSAP(r)). PSSAP is a voluntary and not-for-profit program where industry experts, who average over 40 years of experience each, are sent to a refining, petrochemical, chemical, or LNG site to conduct reviews of the site's process safety management system programs, which include in depth field verifications and significant time spent sharing industry good practices directly with site subject matter experts.

PSSAP's protocols are the heart of the program, which contain over 600 individual 'requirements' that are written as good practices in key process safety areas which are viewed as being capable of preventing a process safety event (PSE), when implemented correctly. The key areas of the PSSAP program are:

• Process Safety Leadership
  
• Operating Practices
  
• Mechanical Integrity (focused on fixed equipment)
  
• Safe Work Practices
  
• Management of Change (MOC)
  
• Process Hazards Analysis (PHA)
  
• Facility Siting

These 7 protocols assess a site's core areas of process safety, and provide meaningful feedback to a site that allows them to prioritize continuous improvement efforts based on perceived risk.

Since PSSAP's inception, API and AFPM members have continuously evaluated the program for other areas where industry could use more assistance and tools to close perceived gaps in other areas of process safety management. As a result of this continuous evaluation of industry data and trends, PSSAP created additional protocols to assist in helping industry mature process safety management programs. These new protocols are as follows:

• Product Storage & Transfer
  
• Incident Learning
• NEW: Safeguards (available if completing PHA protocol)

The newest offering, offered as of April of 2022, is the PSSAP Safeguards protocol, which evaluates the safeguards identified in a site's Process Hazards Analysis (PHA) to ensure that the site has implemented the mitigative action appropriately. This can help a site assure their process of assessing risk at their sites.

PSSAP has been offered to industry for a decade. Since 2012, when PSSAP began being offered to sites, API has coordinated over 170 assessments of sites around the world. As such, API maintains a benchmarking database of assessment outcomes. As part of participating in the program, a site receives a benchmarking report that allows them to benchmark themselves with their peers through a robust statistical analysis. They are able to see a ranked view of their overall performance, as well as their performance by individual set of like-and-kind requirements. Such analysis allows them to make informed decisions about limited continuous improvement resources, putting those resources to areas and programs that might be lagging industry-wide performance. Further to this database and benchmarking report, the site receives updated benchmarking information yearly for a period of six years, so that the site may continue to monitor industry performance and trends, relevant to their previous assessment performance.

Of the 170+ assessments, API is seeing an increasing interest from international sites. In 2022 alone, API conducted 11 international assessments at sites in Spain, Denmark, Thailand, Singapore, Korea, Canada, and Saudi Arabia. As PSSAP continues to expand internationally, an opportunity is presented to create regionally-specific benchmarking so that API and AFPM can analyze if certain regions of the world differ in their need for process safety support and good practice sharing, which will help the international community organize more targeted efforts.

Additionally, API and AFPM review PSSAP benchmarking data yearly, at minimum, to look for trends in industry performance in specific areas to see if additional programs or offerings are necessary, with the goal of reducing incidents and ensuring that the PSSAP protocols address key findings in industry, coordinating with API RP 754 PSE data.

PSSAP exists for one reason: helping the industry mature their process safety programs. As such, our PSSAP protocols are available to any operator who wishes to use them to assess their programs, regardless of if they decide to participate in the program formally and conduct a PSSAP Assessment with our assessors. As such, operators should be aware that this resource is available to them so that they can holistically assess their programs to ensure they do not have blind spots.