(48y) How Confident Are You That Your Major Accident Risks Are Under Control?

Major accidents in the process industries including those at Texas City , Buncefield UK and in the Gulf of Mexico have highlighted the critical role played by senior managers and executives. Effective leadership is essential if companies are to develop a positive safety culture that remains constantly vigilant towards the risk of a major process safety incident. In the UK the HSE has made leadership a key priority for the high hazard industries and there is a cross-industry initiative to develop and deliver training focussed towards board members responsible for process safety performance.

This paper explores the leadership failings that contributed to recent major accidents, and the cost to both the company reputation and the individuals involved. Key principles are discussed that can help improve leadership in the major hazard industries. These include; attitudes and decisions of senior manager affecting the investment strategy and the safety culture of the organisation, reinforcing the importance of safety by personal example, thorough understanding of major accident hazards and key risk control systems, investigating process safety incident and near misses to find the underlying causes, developing world class safety management systems, and identifying weaknesses in these systems using targeted performance indicators.

The author bases this paper on the development of a training standard for ‘Process Safety Leadership’ involving a cross-industry ‘expert panel’. Training of senior executives in compliance with this standard has been carried out from late 2011 and feedback from these courses and the key requirements for effective leadership will be discussed.