CCPS Projects

This project will develop and publish a book providing advisory guidance on process safety for laboratories and pilot plants using as a basis the management system elements presented in the 2007 CCPS Guidelines for Risk Based Process Safety. The current version of NFPA 45 (2011) clearly draws a distinction between laboratories and pilot plants and focuses only on lab fire protection and provides no detailed guidance on many aspects of process safety. This book will pull together both literature information and company experience, including incident case study examples, to present management system processes and hazard controls practices appropriate for bench and small scale chemical operations.  Twenty four organizations are participating with 19 CCPS member companies, 4 SAChE university representatives and 1 DOE National Lab (chair of NFPA 45 committee).

The objective of Project 276 is to develop an integrated set of policies, procedures, permits, and other systems that are designed to manage risks associated with non-routine activities. Examples of these activities include performing hot work, opening process vessels or lines, and entering a confined space.

To date, a Safe Work Practice (SWP) document has been developed for hot work authorization, line breaking/isolation, lockout/tagout (control of energy hazards), and confined space entry.

The contents will be restructured by adding focus on the needs of the target audience – the undergraduate students.  This will include more details on understanding hazards & risks, source models, inherently safer design etc.  The basic order of ‘what can go wrong, how bad can it be, how frequently would it occur and how to reduce the resulting risk.  The new edition of the book will be made more valuable to educators, by providing problem sets and lecture outlines for each chapter. 

We are looking for people with specific experience in delivering  undergraduate education in Process Safety. 

This is a regional project being executed in Brazil and rest of the Latin America.  The primary product will be in Portuguese and Spanish. We will use the game theory to develop tools for developing skills, drive innovation in Process Safety, motivating people to change behaviors, etc.

We are seeking Risk Based Process Safety (RBPS) success stories to be incorporated into the RBPS Implementation Guide. Please use the template provided to submit a success story and email your completed form to RBPS-Stpry@aiche.org. All submitted stories will be reviewed by the project chairs and you will be contacted to ensure you agree with the final contents to be included.  

RBPS Story Template

Since Guidelines for Risk-Based Process Safety was first published in 2007 it has served as the reference for theory and concepts related to Risk Based Process Safety (RBPS). The purpose of Guidelines for Risk-Based Process Safety is to help organizations design and implement more effective process safety management systems by providing methods and ideas on how to (1) design a process safety management system, (2) correct a deficient process safety management system, or (3) improve process safety management practices. A risk-based approach reduces the potential for assigning an undue number of resources to manage lower-risk activities, thereby freeing up resources for tasks that address higher-risk activities. The theoretical groundwork developed in Guidelines for Risk-Based Process Safety serves as the basis for the Risk-Based Process Safety Implementation Guide.

The Implementation Guide will

• Provide real-world practices that have been developed by CCPS member companies as effective applications for risk management.
• Complement Guidelines for Risk-Based Process Safety with success stories from CCPS Member companies, providing practical insights into strategies and practices that have proven effective when applying the RBPS Elements.
• Provide examples of systems and programs that have been deployed and helped prevent incidents from happening, for each of the Elements and Pillars. These are proven examples of management systems and processes that have improved the effectiveness of process safety at companies and throughout industry. This reference will provide organizations with easy access to these best practices so they can incorporate or adapt based on their site or company needs. Each example will present the issue, provide details on the solutions that were implemented, discuss the resources required, highlight challenges to implementation, and show how those challenges were overcome. These examples will help us meet our collective goal of “A World without Process Safety Incidents^TM.”

This book will differ from many CCPS books, in that it will showcase and highlight success stories that can be replicated, rather than sharing information and learnings from incidents to prevent further incidents from occurring. The Implementation Guide will focus on positive outcomes achieved by the implementation of process safety programs related to the Elements and Pillars of RBPS.

This book will seek to provide the answer to one question – “What went right?”