(58c) Exploring the Emerging Trends and Practices for Process Safety

To explore what are the emerging trends and practices for process safety it is necessary to approach companies and examine their practices for safety. It is desirable to engage with a number of companies working in the same industrial sector in order to study the safety program style, as this is the key which influences the response of employees towards safety actions. This is ultimately the reflection of the 'safety culture' of an organization. To be able to identify consistencies or differences in implementation of practices, it is necessary to compare vital statistics between companies presenting good and bad performances of safety. A suitable way to commence this activity is to review their respective accident rates. In order to evaluate and breakdown the safety programs being applied by each of the companies, it is necessary to utilise a comparative tool which penetrates the companies' safety programs style and content. Considering the approach above, a tool has been created which consists of the measurement of 5 components describing the 'safety culture' of an organisation. The tool has the capability to score each of the safety components. This enables analysis to recognise the weaker aspects of the safety program and/or management. This means that those (previously unknown?) barriers to success can be identified to act as a basis for a continuous improvement plan. It is necessary, therefore, that a management system platform be sufficiently flexible to accommodate changes or additions discovered through analysis and measurement of the management system. This forms the basis of implementation of Continuous Improvement, and may follow the traditional Shewhart Cycle, i.e. Plan, Do, Check, Act. This investigation was made in cooperation with the Chemical and Statistical Departments of the Institut Químic de Sarrià, Universitat Ramon Llull in Spain with the participation of AsSevi Association and a number of chemical companies located in the Tarragona City, Barcelona. The tool has been derived from an original concept proposed by Sheffick et al., 2007, Distributed Safety Management, (GDS for its abbreviation in Spanish), which establishes those aspects to which attention should be posed in order to achieve excellence in safety. The tool was developed to focus on the human aspects of the approach of Health and Safety in the workplace. It determines the degree to which human aspects interact with the management system. The five safety components comprising the tool are: ï Commitment of the managers towards safety. ï Participation of the workers in the process safety. ï Responsibility of the workers regarding safety aspects. ï Zero tolerance regarding safety rules. ï Manager's consistency with the safety rules.

Validation was made upon developing the tool whereby survey results from the various chemical plants aligned with their actual statistics of accidents reported to the Spanish Labour Ministry.