Company executives and engineers working in the oil, gas, and chemical industries of Southeast Asia, Australia, and the Pacific island nations, recently gathered with researchers and representatives from governmental agencies to explore ways to improve safe practices in that region’s industrial facilities.
The 2nd AIChE-CCPS Asia-Pacific Conference — organized by the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) and its Center for Chemical Process Safety (CCPS) — convened in Perth, Australia, February 10–11. More than 120 industry representatives, safety engineers, and other stakeholders attended the conference, where they shared technical information, engineering strategies, and best practices for designing and operating safer chemical and petrochemical plants and industrial processes.
According to Shakeel Kadri, executive director of CCPS, the Asia-Pacific Conference is one of a growing roster of international process safety conferences organized by CCPS. Reflecting on the latest conference, Kadri said, “We found that companies in the Asia-Pacific region have a strong interest in process safety, and attendees appreciated the opportunities to learn from the expertise of CCPS’s collaborating organizations and engineering professionals.”
Kadri added that this sharing of knowledge about chemical process safety aligns with CCPS’s Vision 20/20, which he said “provides companies and employees in the chemical process industries with a roadmap of step change improvements in process safety.” He noted that Vision 20/20, and the programs at CCPS conferences, are built around five industry tenets: committed safety culture, disciplined adherence to standards, intentional competency development, vibrant management systems, and the enhanced application and sharing of lessons learned.
Kym Bills, chief executive officer of the Western Australian Energy Research Alliance, chaired the Asia-Pacific Conference, with assistance provided by CCPS’s regional office in Mumbai, India. The program covered safety issues and technologies of particular relevance to that region’s industries, and included cases studies from chemical and petrochemical companies in Australia, China, Thailand, and Japan. These examples illustrated potential pitfalls related to industrial process design, management procedures, and workplace culture, and the related discussion focused on ways to mitigate and prevent industrial incidents at the planning and design stages, before they can impact people, the natural environment, or plant infrastructure.
Kadri noted that the attendees at the Asia-Pacific conference were eager to help CCPS expand its safety training and information exchange internationally. In addition to recent CCPS conferences in North America, Latin America, and in China, Kadri says that CCPS conferences are now being planned for the Middle East and Europe.
Other major CCPS conferences scheduled for 2015 include the Global Congress on Process Safety (held in connection with AIChE’s Spring Meeting, April 26–30, in Austin, Texas), and the CCPS Global Summit on Process Safety to be held November 3–5, 2015, in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
About AIChE:
AIChE is a professional society of 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 frontier 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.
About CCPS:
AIChE founded the Center for Chemical Process Safety (CCPS) in 1985 in response to the 1984 incident in Bhopal, India. CCPS develops technology and management practices to eliminate or mitigate chemical process accidents. It has published more than 100 books and held more than 30 international conferences that incorporate the most advanced thinking in process safety. More than 170 companies around the world support CCPS with contributions and volunteers. Sponsors learn from the best in the industry, receive discounts on books and courses, special workshops, and an extended network of contacts. CCPS is also the world’s largest provider of undergraduate engineering curriculum materials on safety through its SACHE program, in which more than 160 universities world-wide participate.