Kelly Keim retired as Chief Process Safety Engineer from ExxonMobil Research and Engineering after over 33 years of service. Following 15 years in several levels of management in operations and maintenance, Kelly found his passion in process safety. Kelly has led HAZOPs, risk assessments of many types, Layer of Protection Analysis (LOPA), inherent safety studies, fire protection surveys, pre-startup safety reviews, Management System reviews, and major accident hazard studies. In his final years, Kelly led ExxonMobil’s revamping of tools and methods for assessing and managing the risk of operating hazards with the highest potential consequences such as BLEVE, toxic releases, and vapor cloud explosions.
Kelly served as vice-chair of the API RP 754: Process Safety Indicators for the Refining and Petrochemical Industries standard for both its initial and second editions. He spoke to the US Chemical Safety Board on July 24, 2012 about how the industry had rapidly embraced the standard and what the industry had learned in its first years of its use. Kelly has made presentations on the use of process safety indicators for driving performance improvement and similar topics at the AFPM national safety conference, the AICHE Global Congress on Process Safety, the CCPS Latin American Process Safety Conference and at the Mary Kay O’Connor Process Safety Symposia. Kelly has had three articles published in Chemical Processing magazine and participated in the CCPS drafting team for Guidelines for Initiating Events and Independent Protection Layers.
In October, 2016 Kelly was recognized at the Mary Kay O’Connor process safety symposium at Texas A&M University as part of a team receiving the Harry M. West Service Award for contributions made to the process safety center as well as the Trevor Kletz Merit Award for contributions to the field of process safety.