(143c) Disciplined Adherence to Standards & Meticulous Verification – The Checks and Balances of Process Safety

It’s been said that managing Process Safety is all about the details.  When details matter… verification is the key to success.  Whether you’re working in industry, striving to prevent incidents in your own facility, or working on behalf of the public to prevent incidents in all of the facilities in your area of responsibility, an effective approach to verification is critical.

Verification comes in all shapes and sizes:  operator daily and weekly verifications, positive material identification, engineering standards adherence verifications, routine inspection and maintenance of equipment, supervisor & leadership field verification of routine work, lock-out / tag-out and other work permitting procedures, sign off sheets for critical operating procedures, training record reviews, tracking closure of action items, records reviews, formal audits and countless other activities occur regularly in well managed facilities.  This paper examines several of these approaches to verification, and how a system of nested verification activities are essential to assuring strong layers of protection remain in place and functioning properly to prevent a process safety event.