Psi Evergreening

Process safety is important. Few people would argue this point, but the implementation of best practices and the breadth, depth, and precision required are constantly being debated. Even when the techniques for performing process safety studies are well established and accepted, disagreements may arise.

Several factors can contribute to this conflict when performing these process safety studies. First, the history and science of process safety is continuously advancing. As a result, there may be more known hazards to review, a larger number of scenarios that can be efficiently analyzed via automation, and a desire to constantly drive down risk. Additionally, at a given site, there may be competing interests between safety and the economics and timing of performing safety analyses. In a setting where time pressures and high dollar mitigation projects are being discussed, there may be an increasing challenge to the basis and accuracy of process safety studies. Finally, there is the issue of regular turnover of plant and project staff. Even though process safety is acknowledged as important, there may be a constant need to educate new and existing staff on the proper process safety techniques to adopt and to convince management of the accuracy and significance of process safety findings.

As a result of these competing factors, the process safety professional must be not only a technical expert, but also an excellent communicator. Especially when prescriptive standards do not currently exist at a facility, the process safety professional may need to champion a study change or mitigation plan to management. Through the use of specific examples in facility siting, the authors will present key lessons learned and offer suggestions to improve process safety communications between plant staff and management. A practical set of communication tools will also be shown.