Intentional Competency Development

In the chemical industry, the main focus over the past several years had been on improving the technical aspects and engineering systems to improve safety. Most accidents that now occur are attributable to “human factors”. It is becoming increasingly evident that it is necessary to address the behavioral and organizational factors that influence safety performance and help organizations in risk reduction. The paper discusses why organizations should establish a live Competency Assessment System to minimize the likelihood of errors occurring. The paper considers access to quality trainers and assessors as a key underpinning aspect of any strong Competency management system.

Evidences show that safety performance of an organization is greatly influenced by aspects of management that have not traditionally been seen as ‘part of safety’.  Organizations have come to realize that the general likelihood of an accident occurring in their plant depends not just on the actions of individual employees but on the safety culture of the organization. Safety culture consists of values, attitudes, perceptions, competencies and behavior of the people that make up the organization.

The reality is that in managing process risks, ultimately, strong Process safety management systems and the overall performance of a facility in meeting risk goals is what truly matters. Thus, a Process Safety management system alone is a paper tiger if the element of People competence is missing from it. It is time to move from how equipped my training academy is to how do we assure the competence to meet the performance standard to achieve safety culture.

The competence standard is incomplete without adding behavioral competence requirements to functional requirement. Competencies are demonstrable knowledge, skills, attitudes and behaviors that are required to perform a particular job to a predetermined standard. They are important because if employee competence is not maintained then accidents, injuries or near misses may result or the product may not meet business requirements

 Process hazard analysis (PHA) plays a critical role in process safety programs. PHA studies are conducted by teams of people and their competency plays a critical role in the quality of PHA studies. Teams lacking competency will produce poor quality studies in which scenarios may be missed or described inadequately, and scenario risks may be estimated incorrectly. Such PHA faults can lead to higher risk being accepted than should be tolerated.

Both the competency of individual team members and the entire PHA team are important. The ability of the team to perform PHA constructively and cooperatively depends on the interactions of the team members, which, in turn, is a function of the personal attributes of team members, including their personalities, backgrounds, behaviors, and attitudes.

Like competence requirements for PHA, organizations need to ensure competence of all those employees who are assuming PSM critical roles through structured competence assurance process in place. Every role shall perform to the Competency standard maintained for that role. Competence standard should highlight the skill and behaviors required for performing tasks for the role to ensure that independent job can be assigned to competent individual without major risk. The assurance process shall be used for assessment in same role, progression and movement to new role. All job movements and progression should be based on the demonstrated competency and performance.

A competency assurance program should address:

• Identification of PSM critical roles
• Maintaining competence standard for each role
• Competency assessment process and dealing with outcome
• Integration with HR processes
• Competency requirements
• Defining and using performance metrics