20th Process Plant Safety Symposium (PPSS)
The Process Plant Safety Symposium (PPSS) is one of four parallel symposia that comprise The Global Congress on Process Safety (GCPS). Organized by volunteers from industry and academia, the PPSS conference focus is to provide proven best practices, perspectives, methods and tools that can be readily practiced and provide value to personnel at the plant level.
Meet the PPSS Chairs - Chairs' Photo
The year 2018 is the 20th anniversary of the Process Plant Safety Symposium. The 20th PPSS will feature Best Presentation/Paper Award recipients from the symposium history and is also seeking new papers that will have a continuing impact in Process Safety at the plant level within your company and with your customers.
Papers are selected by session chairs based on an abstract of 100-200 words. The abstract must offer a brief account of the contents, conclusions, and the relevance to the topic area. Submitted abstracts must include the author(s), author affiliation, full address, email, and phone number. The papers will be published in the GCPS proceedings.
CFA Session Topics:
Process Safety Culture - Let's Get Real
Improving Human Performance and Process Safety Effectiveness
Technology Impact on Process Safety
MOC's Gone Wild - Essential, but so Challenging to Get Right
Application of Risk Assessment Methods and Tools
Best Practices in Process Safety and Risk management
PPSS 20th Anniversary "Best of the Best"
Case Histories (GCPS Joint Session)
Process Safety Culture - Let's Get Real
A healthy safety culture is vital to ensuring and sustaining great process safety performance. This session solicits papers to share how to drive ownership and true belief in process safety excellence within any or all levels of the organization. Preference will be given to case studies of actual implementation efforts that have led to improved culture. Potential topics include:
- Journey to a Highly Reliable Organization (HRO)
- Maintaining a Sense of Vulnerability
- Using Case Studies and Lessons Learned to Spark the Discussion
- Culture Assessment Implementation Best Practices
- Getting Leadership on Board
Improving Human Performance and Process Safety Effectiveness
The reliability of a process safety program is influenced by numerous issues, such as the management system, organizational considerations, and human factors. Organizations are making investments in their operating procedures, training programs, and control systems to promote operational excellence. This session is intended to be a showcase of tools and best practices that are making a notable difference in human performance and process safety effectiveness. Potential topics include:
- Hazard Identification Effectiveness
- Risk Assessment Effectiveness
- Communication and Training Effectiveness
- Procedure Effectiveness
- Keeping Process Safety Simple
- Key Process Safety Performance Indicators
Learning from Experience
A fundamental reason to learn from our past is to prevent repeating mistakes that have led to incidents. Catastrophic accidents typically share common features. This session seeks papers illustrating practical ways to optimize incident investigations, and to better apply hard-earned knowledge gained from experience. Potential topics include:
- Novel applications or unique developments in Root Cause Analysis
- Getting the most from Process Safety Near Misses
- Seeking and correcting management system shortcomings before tragedy strikes
- Mining databases and archives for hints on inherent safety and best practices
- Do’s and Don’ts in writing incident investigation reports
- Expanding lessons learned across an organization
- Passing process safety knowledge from Baby Boomers to Millennials
Technology Impact on Process Safety
There have and will continue to be technological advances in equipment, tools and methods intended for use at manufacturing sites. Several recent notable examples include database driven software tools, advanced process control systems, drones, robots, and wireless forms of communication for maintenance, surveillance, and process control. This session is soliciting papers that focus not only on emerging technologies and tools but also on their process safety lifecycle, integration and practical application at the plant and/or company level. Potential topics include:
- Integration and practical applications of new technologies
- Process safety lifecycle of new technologies
- Case histories including positive and/or negative impacts on process safety
MOC's Gone Wild - Essential, but so Challenging to Get Right
Proper Management of Change implementation and practice is a significant process safety management challenge. MOC is so often in the weeds – uncertain applicability criteria; extensive paper work; slow implementation; plant improvement impediment. When done properly, MOC’s ensure changes in personnel, operations and installations have tolerable risk impact and ensure the PHA is effectively an evergreen analysis. We are soliciting papers primarily focusing on MOC case studies and experiences documenting challenges, successes and failures to meet those tolerable risk and evergreen challenges. The content of the papers should be support recommendations to help attendees avoid pitfalls while taming the MOC beast.
Application of Risk Assessment Methods and Tools
Risk assessments provide understanding of risks including causes, consequences and probabilities. Methods and tools for risk assessment vary across industries, organizational levels, and activities. This session solicits papers which detail experiences and best practices leading to practical applications of risk assessment methods. Potential topics include:
- Layer of Protection Analysis (LOPA) Best Practices
- Bowtie Best Practices
- Other Risk Assessment Best Practices
- How Risk Assessments fit into the Process Safety Lifecycle.
Best Practices in Process Safety and Risk management
Process safety and risk management is the application of management controls of highly hazardous chemicals and process so that the risks of injuries and incidents are minimized. This session solicits papers on experiences, best practices, and/or application of these management principles. Potential topics include:
- Application of inherently safe design
- Real world examples of risk management practices
- Best practices of implementing process safety and risk management principles.
- Topics not suitable for other sessions
PPSS 20th Anniversary "Best of the Best"
No call for Abstracts/Papers – Invited Presenters only.
This session celebrating the 20th Anniversary of the Process Plant Safety Symposium will feature PPSS Best Presentation Award winning presentations on important technical topics updated for today and presented by invited outstanding leaders and presenters. The session will highlight the “Best of the Best” with current insights into important technical topics. Learn about proven best practices, methods and tools, and hear new perspectives - all providing value and focusing on applications at the plant or operations level. You won’t want to miss it!
Case Histories (GCPS Joint Session)
Reviews of process safety incidents provide valuable learning opportunities. This session invites papers to help understand the causes and lessons learned from incidents in the industry with emphasis on events that have helped define and develop the process safety field over the years.