Making Process Safety Management Systems Vibrant

Since the 1980’s, CCPS and its members have championed the importance of a comprehensive top-driven process safety management system which ties together all elements and requirements.  Unfortunately, the existence of a management system alone is not sufficient to ensure all engineering, operational, and leadership dimensions of process safety are properly handled.  As is the case with management systems for quality, environmental, personal safety, finance, and any other business requirement, fulfilling the detailed requirements can become ponderous and sleep-inducing, and at worst tick-the-box exercises which satisfy the management system but fail to address the necessary tasks in sufficient depth to protect against accidents.

For this reason, CCPS called for “Vibrant” Management Systems” in its Process Safety Vision 20/20.  Vibrant management systems drive regular, consistent, and timely execution of many tasks by a wide range of people at many levels.  Due to the breadth of requirements related to process safety and linkages to other management systems such as security, environment, personal safety, and others, Vibrant Management Systems need to be computer-based, networked, and smart.  Each participant must be able to see just the information, requirements, experience, metrics, and tools he or she needs to do the job, and the coordination of tasks must take place seamlessly behind the scenes.  Equally important, recommendations and tasks must be managed via smart workflows and driven to completion.  Good design is essential to alleviate drudgery and keep people focused on what is critical.  This paper will describe work to develop a Vibrant Management System which lives up to the challenges of CCPS Vision 20/20.