(54ad) Establishing "Risk-Based Thinking" Makes Preventive Action Part of the Routine (culture)

Case study: process safety excellence and risk based inspection at an Olefins Cracker and polymer plants site

The process safety excellence assessment showed several area’s for improvement combined in four themes – Asset Integrity, Risk based Thinking, Professional knowledge and measurement and metrics (fig 1).

Fig1: themes for improvement

Plant management decided to combine the theme’s risk based thinking and asset integrity in a mechanical integrity transformation program for the site using “Risk Based Inspection (RBI)” as the vehicle for change.

Fig2: RBI journey

The RBI transformation journey resulted in a sustainably embedded risk-based thinking in the organization realizing preventive action to reduce the risk of the potential incidents. One of the key performance indicators of the business case for the RBI transformation journey is the “risk reduction potential” which showed an associated cost of potential risk of 1.35 Mio Euro for 300 equipment.

Fig 3: risk reduction potential

The core of the RBI transformation journey was to establish a risk-based thinking culture in which preventive action is seen as normal. Establishing a high-performance in process safety in which managing risks to prevent incidents from happening is normal practice. In a high-performance process safety culture, there a balance between process safety management system with technical soundness and human factor which is enabled by leadership.

How to realize a high-performance process safety culture?

The most effective way to realize a high-performance process safety culture is an experience driven transformation journey in this case using RBI as the vehicle for change.

One of the success factors of an experience driven transformation journey is that people are from the start aware of their improvement potential in a way that they admit themselves that they can improve. Something like an “ah” moment and becoming aware of the blind spots. I understand know where we can improve in system, culture, technical status and competencies and believe in it that we can improve.

How to get to that moment? Together with the people in the organization visualizing fact based the improvement potential by looking at the situation from different perspectives like the technical soundness, management system and the behavior/culture point of view. Different tools, from brown paper workshops about the processes to case studies support the process in realizing the visualization of mutually understanding the gaps in the system and the individual usage of the system by those people involved indicate the process safety culture within a company.

To understand the culture, it is necessary to get an understanding of the attitudes, values and beliefs of the people in the organization from leadership to the shop floor.

All the perspectives at the end give a realistic picture of the current safety culture by visualizing the blind spots and creating an environment in which it is safe to become conscious incompetent (the “AH” moment) as an organization and person.

Then in cooperation with leadership in the organization developing a transformation roadmap to realize the vision or in other words the picture of the future. It is a roadmap which is owned by the people and leadership in the organization because they have developed it themselves only facilitated by the consultants. Starting journey with the organization and realizing high performance is a stage by stage process. It is like climbing a mountain to go first to base camp and that camp by camp to reach the summit. Now, you are at the summit the decent is the tricky part of the journey and evenly important. This also accounts for developing the competencies stage by stage – need continuous step back to understand the changes, f.e. new people.

What is the role of leadership in realizing a high-performance process safety culture?

The key role for leadership is to understand that the road to success is to keep the balance between a system driven and human driven performance improvement to realize the results. Leadership adapts to facilitative leadership competencies, like results focus, managing the boundaries, motivational learning, challenging, etc., that enables them to realize the results.

People have the feeling and motivation that they can improve and they are in the starting position to take the steps for improvement.

Leadership use the assessment to create a clear picture of what Process Safety Excellence mean for the company = creating the beacon for making the transformation plan/ roadmap.

Role of leadership at all levels in this process is to create an environment in which the experience driven transformation journey to high performance process safety culture is possible by keeping the balance between system/technical soundness and human factor. It is about improving the management system (boundaries in which people are working) and developing the culture and people in the organization..

The result of the RBI transformation journey to a high-performance process safety culture is a platform on which the organization is continually improving the integrity of the plants on site.

A high-performance process safety culture in which people are actively aware of where they are related to best practices and where there is a continuous challenge of the current procedures and behaviors by trying to identify blind spots. This committed culture has risk-based thinking at its core.

Fig. 4   System and human related elements. Both are mutually dependent. If one fails, the other might not be able to compensate. Leadership has to ensure the right balance.