(107c) Process Safety Maturity Assessment Tool

Introduction

Due to rapid change from divestitures, acquisitions, and greenfield startups, Albemarle found it challenging to communicate and assess our Process Safety expectations. Typical programs for on-boarding such as a review of the requirements were ineffective due to the breadth of requirements. While the standard audit program is effective, it is limited in scope and frequency. We decided we needed a tool that would both guide site management though the milestones related to process safety management systems and one that would allow senior management to assess progress. One key aspect of the tool is that it needed to be applicable to every site in the company; even though the maturity of the process safety program was diverse.

Tool Development

To address the site diversity issue, the tool was divided into maturity tiers. The four tiers are:

• Beginning – Typical of a site with very little process safety experience and very few management systems in place to build a strong process safety culture.
• Foundational – Considered the minimum acceptable requirements for effective operation of a chemical process.
• Advanced – Includes many best practices that may not be requirements but have proven to be indicators of a strong process safety culture.
• World Class – In many cases, these are aspirational objectives. At the core of world class process safety culture is a workforce that owns the program and is fully integrated into its execution.

The tiered approach is important because it provides every site with immediate feedback on the current state of their program and with reasonable and meaningful objectives to complete within their current tier.

Next, it was necessary to define the expectations themselves. We needed to focus our efforts on the process safety aspects that would be the most effective in improving the culture at all of our sites. To do this, we started with the twenty elements presented in Guidelines for Risk Based Process Safety (AICHE, 2007). However, it quickly became apparent that trying to assess twenty different elements was too unwieldy. After a review of past performance and based on our qualitative assessments, it was decided that nine of the elements would be used in the tool.

• Process Safety Competency
• Process Knowledge Management
• Hazard Identification and Risk Management
• Operating Procedures
• Asset Integrity and Reliability
• Training and Performance Assurance
• Management of Change
• Operational Readiness
• Incident Reporting and Issues Management

With both the tiers and elements defined, we could build a spreadsheet with a 9 x 4 matrix. The final step was to define the expectations that were required for each matrix box. In some cases, the expectation could be defined with one aspect, but others took two or three.

Assessing and Scoring

In early 2022, each site was asked to volunteer to fill out the Process Safety Maturity Assessment Tool in an effort to see if the results would distinguish a site’s process safety maturity. Sites were asked to “color” the matrix cells with green, yellow, or red based on their self-assessment of the site’s program. About half of the sites responded and the results verified that the tool was effective. There was clear delineation.

The next step was to do a more rigorous, collaborative effort on the effectiveness of the tool. Part of this was to determine how much additional detail may be required to get consistent assessments on each aspect. For example, will the aspect be interpreted by the person doing the self-assessment, as was intended. Four sites were asked to use the following definitions for each aspect which then defined the color of each block.

• Effective System (green)
• Marginal System (yellow)
• Needs Improvement (red)

An on-site meeting was held to review each aspect in detail, to determine if all agree with the self-assessment and, more importantly, to verify that the aspect was interpreted correctly. As a result of these meetings, it was determined that additional information was not needed; the aspects are easily interpreted when there are only three rating choices.

Following this “proof of concept”, scoring was added to the spreadsheet to allow an assessment of the current program and improvement over time. More points are awarded for tiers of lower maturity because improvement in these tiers is more desirable. This scoring also creates a greater gap between sites with legacy process safety programs and those that are just beginning the journey.

The scores can also be broken down by element, by business unit, and assessed company wide. We believe this could show overall deficiencies in corporate procedures or the communication of our expectations.

In 2023, all sites will be required to complete a self-assessment with the Process Safety Maturity Assessment Tool. The resulting data will be assessed and tracked to ensure that key improvement opportunities are identified and necessary resources are allocated to promote improvement efforts. The tool will continue to be used to gauge progress in each site’s process safety journey.