Center for Chemical Process Safety Marks 30 Years of Contributions to Industrial Safety

In April 2015, safety personnel from a variety of industries, including chemical, energy and pharmaceutical facilities, will gather in Austin, Texas, for the 11th Global Congress on Process Safety. The Global Congress, held in connection with the American Institute of Chemical Engineers’ (AIChE) Spring Meeting, brings together safety engineers, process designers, and plant managers to discuss strategies for safer industrial sites. Co-organizing the Congress, and providing the guiding vision for process safety excellence, is AIChE’s Center for Chemical Process Safety (CCPS), which is marking its 30th anniversary in 2015.

Since its founding in 1985, CCPS — through the shared expertise of thousands of colleagues working at companies around the world — has filled a void in industrial practice, creating innovative programs that integrate safer approaches to chemical process design into the training and practices of employees in a broad array of industries. The organization has published more than 100 guidelines books on a spectrum of facilities management topics.

Scott Berger, who directed CCPS’s activities from 2002 through 2014, says that prior to the 1980s, industry leaders had an appreciation of safety, but that appreciation extended mostly to preventing personal injuries. “Companies were aware of the need to manage serious incidents,” says Berger, but “process safety was not practiced in a consistent or reliable way.”

In the wake of the devastating release of methyl isocyanate gas in Bhopal, India, on December 4, 1984, industry leaders began examining their companies’ approaches to safety. According to Berger, “It became obvious that the practices necessary to ensure safety of the company’s processes — and the public — required much more of a chemical engineering focus.”

In February 1985, leaders from several companies asked AIChE, one of the few established sources for chemical process safety guidance, to launch a new initiative to improve process safety practices at plants in the U.S. and around the world. The plan called for the creation of new resources and broad-based education and training programs — not only to instill knowledge of sound and effective practices, but also to promote process safety as a core industry value.

With these objectives, and with buy-in from chemical- and safety-engineers among its membership, AIChE’s Board of Directors established the Center for Chemical Process Safety on April 23, 1985. Later that year, the Center published its first book, "Guidelines for Hazard Evaluation Procedures."

Since then, CCPS’s roster of participating companies has increased from 39 charter members to more than 180 companies today. Their cooperation has made it possible for CCPS to document, maintain, and continually improve upon its body of process safety knowledge and information, while advocating for more engagement by industry leaders and stronger in-company safety cultures to ensure successful process safety programs.

In addition to its expanding library of Guideline books, milestone CCPS projects have included the Safety and Chemical Engineering Education (SAChE) program, which was launched in 1992 as a supplement to university-level engineering courses; as well as CCPS’s influential annual conferences for safety professionals, held in connection with the Global Congress on Process Safety and at other venues around the world.

While the technical information compiled and distributed by CCPS has done much to establish protocols for inherently safer industrial process design and practices, more work remains to be done in the realm of human factors and safety culture.

Shakeel Kadri, a former director of global process safety and risk management at Air Products (Allentown, Pennsylvania), who succeeded Berger as CCPS’s executive director in February 2015, notes that “Many process safety incidents have one key underlying factor — a need to improve operational discipline.” He adds, “Industry now has good knowledge of risk-based process safety management systems. It’s the implementation — where process safety culture plays a key role — that needs improvement.”

CCPS’s roadmap for achieving these improvements is laid out in its Vision 20/20 objectives for industry, which advocate for committed safety culture, disciplined adherence to standards, intentional competency development, vibrant management systems, and the enhanced application and sharing of lessons learned. Leaders note that this advocacy is particularly needed in regions where government oversight of health, safety, and the environment is just beginning. In this regard, CCPS points to its expansion outside North America, with recently established CCPS conferences and committees in Latin America, China, and the Asia Pacific region. New activities are also planned for sites in Europe, the Middle East, and India.