(55ck) Lessons in Chemistry: Integrating Human Factors into PSM of Aging Facilities

Successful day-to-day operation of a chemical plant includes reliably producing a quality, competitive and cost-effective product while also maintaining a safe workplace. Safety, quality, and reliability are interconnected such that the only way to have success is to continually progress on each. Progress on process safety is especially challenging at aging plants where it is not always financially feasible to upgrade equipment or install robust engineering safeguards. In these situations, we often rely on administrative controls to ensure people do not make mistakes. In doing so, blame often shifts to people when things go wrong, not understanding the underlying causes that shape people’s behavior and decision making.

This paper will discuss how to improve safety though:

• Training leadership in Human Factors principles and terminology such that they respond to “human error” causes by addressing to the underlying causes,
• Collaboration with other departments such as reliability, process and project engineering and process control,
• Improving root cause analysis by shifting the focus from fixing people to understanding systemic issues,
• Understanding the constraints to implementing more effective controls and assessing these constraints for the potential to alleviate or remove, and
• Changing how we incentivize behaviors, encouraging actions that align with our stated values.

Practically integrating Human Factors into Process Safety Management will improve safeguard effectiveness and reduce likelihood of incidents. By doing this, systemic issues can be uncovered and mitigated thus improving overall performance with improved safety culture as a leading cause for improvement.