(133c) Process Safety Site Assessment Program (PSSAP(r)): Repeat Assessments Drive Improvements in PSM

The Process Site Assessment Program (PSSAP®) is a not-for-profit industry assessment program managed by API, focused on sites that refine or process hydrocarbons, that conducts assessments around the world to help mature process safety programs for over a decade. To date, API has completed over 175 assessments at sites all over the world, inclusive of refineries, petrochemical plants, liquefied natural gas facilities, and tank farms.

During a PSSAP assessment, a team of independent, third-party process safety experts (with an average of 40+ years of experience, each) spend about a week at a site, working with employees and leadership — across shifts — to fully evaluate the health of the existing process safety programs. They use our industry-created good practice-based protocols to systematically provide feedback to a site on a range of process safety topics:

• Process Safety Leadership
  
• Operating Practices
  
• Mechanical Integrity (focused on fixed equipment)
  
• Safe Work Practices
  
• Management of Change (MOC)
  
• Process Hazards Analysis (PHA)
  
• Facility Siting
  
• Product Storage & Transfer
  
• Incident Learning
  
• Hydrofluoric Acid (HF) Alkylation/API RP-751
• Safeguards (available if completing PHA protocol)

The PSSAP protocol topics listed include over 750 individual requirements. They also reference over 100 standards, inclusive of API and non-API standards, as appropriate. The assessors also score each of these 750+ requirements for how well they are implemented at a site. As a result, we have a consistently applied methodology for our benchmarking efforts. The benchmarking database houses the scores of site performance in a blinded and anonymous way, allowing API to analyze the industry performance data and identify trends. By participating in a PSSAP Assessment, a site gains access to this database and compares their results to the results of their peers, blinded and anonymously (i.e., no site can discern the performance of another site). In this presentation, a discussion about the program, the benchmarking, and examples of previous benchmarking will be shown.

API continues to grow this program and expand, having conducted 23 assessments in 2022 and 17 assessments in 2023. We will discuss the assessment trending by types of operators as well as in countries of entry - API has currently conducted assessments in 12 countries around the world.

In the past few years, several sites have been returning to API to have repeated assessments conducted at their sites, presenting a unique opportunity to benchmark their progress toward implementation of the 600+ PSSAP General Assessment requirements (7 of the 10 protocols make up a General Assessment). To date, eleven (11) sites have conducted repeated General Assessments. Of those, ten (10) showed an increase in performance on their second assessment (overall score). On average, scoring on the Mechanical Integrity protocol increase by 6.9% - an increase indicative of large changes and performance improvements in managing these risks at the sites assessed. API is encouraged by these results on repeat assessments.

A few key factors are critical for success in continuously improving process safety programs: 1) a site must have support from senior leadership that the assessment's results should be actioned; 2) a site's culture should embrace continuous improvement and treat the assessments as learning opportunities, not like they would regulatory audits; 3) turnover of leadership and subject matter expertise in this area can have a large impact in the success of the continuous improvement efforts. These will be expanded in more detail as part of the presentation.

API continues to market these programs to all industries that process hazardous materials, especially hydrocarbons. We have created an industry-led offering that continues to drive process safety performance in the right direction, and look forward to continuing to expand into other subsegments of the industry.