(32c) 10 Years of Progress or Slipping into Complacency

The influence of the Process Safety Management Regulations on chemical and petroleum manufacturing and processing industries has been profound. In the early years there was a genuine effort of the covered industries to comply with the provisions that most good managers recognized as good engineering practice. There was a lot of effort put into the Process Hazard Analysis and into developing and implementing mechanical integrity and management of change and all the other provisions. In the 10 years since its implementation, the question can be asked whether the same diligence has maintained the programs in these critical industries. This presentation will present some examples of accidents where the diligence to maintain mechanical integrity, management of change and perform and complete process hazard analysis may indicate that the rigor of the rule may be deteriorating. The paper will look at what may be contributing to that loss of rigor.The impact that a good corporate culture for safety can have on the maintenance of PSM compliance or the impact of a weak culture will be explored. The presentation will offer some ideas that might give the audience measures to use to identify if a facility could be at risk of the effects of a sliding PSM diligence due to specific cultural issues.