How to Improve Operational Discipline and Process Safety Culture Using Conduct of Operations Principles

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Process safety management performance can only be achieved if there is a day-to-day commitment of everyone in an organization to rigorously follow their company PSM management practices. The failure of just one person to complete a job task correctly, just one time, can initiate or contribute to a catastrophic incident such as those that occurred at Bhopal, Chernobyl, and Texas City.   This person can be a worker, supervisor, engineer, manager or executive.  In the wake of such incidents, analyses usually point to deficiencies in the organization’s culture as one of the key contributors to the incident.

As part of its ongoing effort to improve process safety in the chemical industry, the American Institute of Chemical Engineer’s Center for Chemical Process Safety (CCPS) sponsored the publication of Guidelines for Risk Based Process Safety in 2007. In that book, CCPS recommended as industry best practice that organizations implement management systems both for overall safety culture and for conduct of operations/operational discipline COO/OD).  Recently, CCPS published Guidelines for Conduct of Operations and Operational Discipline. 

Conduct of operations (ConOps) is the execution of operational and management tasks in a deliberate and structured manner.  It institutionalizes human reliability and strives to minimizes variations in performance.  An effective ConOps program will help individuals in a “scaled down” organization make better decisions, fewer errors, and reduce the likelihood and severity of incidents.  This paper will discuss lessons from implementing a ConOps and Safety Culture program for offshore drilling and production assets and for onshore petroleum refineries.

The ability to implement effective COO/OD programs both onshore and offshore relies both on the commitment of leadership and the strength of the safety culture in supporting and sustaining changes over the long term. What are the common elements of effective COO and OD systems? How can current company performance in these areas be evaluated? How can effective programs be implemented? These topics will be discussed in this presentation.