More than 170 executives and engineers from more than 50 companies gathered in Mumbai, India, from December 15–16 for the 2014 Global Summit on Process Safety, with a goal of reducing the number and potential impact of industrial incidents.
Organized by the Mumbai-based Asia Pacific office of the Center for Chemical Process Safety (CCPS), a not-for-profit industry-technology subsidiary of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE), the summit was chaired by Hirak Dutta, Executive Director of the Oil Industry Safety Directorate at India’s Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas.
The conference coincided with the 30th anniversary of the December 1984 toxic gas incident in Bhopal, India, with the meeting’s deliberations focusing on the strides that the chemical, refining, and petroleum industries have made in improving process safety standards and practices since that tragedy, particularly through the efforts of CCPS and its many industrial member organizations around the world. CCPS was established in 1985 as a response to Bhopal, and has since collaborated with its member companies to document and promote consistent and effective approaches to process safety through the inherently safer design of processes and facilities, and through its vision for a universal process safety culture across organizations and countries.
Highlights of the summit included a keynote address by Isabelle Louis, Deputy Regional Director for Asia and the Pacific at the United Nations’ Environment Programme office (Bangkok, Thailand), who spoke about process safety management and sustainable development in that region. The conference also featured a discussion forum where key leaders and executive from 10 international companies offered their perceptions on the future of industrial process safety and described how they drive process safety within their own organizations.
Technical presentations at the summit were devoted to themes outlined in CCPS’s Process Safety Vision 20/20 (www.aiche.org/ccps/resources/vision-2020), which provides companies and employees in the process industries with a roadmap of step change improvements in process safety for the near future, and envisions what excellent process safety will look like when championed by industry and society. Vision 20/20 is based on five industry tenets: committed culture, disciplined adherence to standards, intentional competency development, vibrant management systems, and the enhanced application and sharing of lessons learned. Bolstering the Vision are four global societal themes: enhanced stakeholder knowledge, responsible collaboration, harmonization of standards, and meticulous verification of techniques and processes.
The outcome of the discussions at the 2014 Global Summit on Process Safety will set the agenda for the next summit, to be held November 3–5, 2015, in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. In all, seven such annual summits are planned, culminating in the year 2020.
About CCPS
CCPS (www.aiche.org/ccps) is a not-for-profit corporate membership organization within AIChE that identifies and addresses process safety needs in the chemical, pharmaceutical and petroleum industries. CCPS brings together manufacturers, government agencies, consultants, academics and insurers to lead the way in improving process safety. Members, working in project subcommittees, define and develop useful, time-tested guidelines that have practical applications that run the gamut from human factors to qualitative and quantitative risk analysis to security vulnerability to inherently safety design. With more than 100 publications, CCPS is at the forefront of efforts to improve process safety performance. The Global Summit on Process Safety (www.aiche.org/ccps/conferences/ccps-global-summit-on-process-safety) is one of the initiatives to transform CCPS’s Process Safety Vision 20/20 into result oriented actions for achieving process safety excellence.
About AIChE
AIChE is a professional society of more than 45,000 chemical engineers in 100 countries. Its members work in corporations, universities and government using their knowledge of chemical processes to develop safe and useful products for the benefit of society. Through its varied programs, AIChE continues to be a focal point for information exchange on the frontiers of chemical engineering research in such areas as energy, sustainability, biological and environmental engineering, nanotechnology and chemical plant safety and security. More information about AIChE is available at www.aiche.org.