Effectiveness of Process Safety Tools & Management

The Variability of factors that affect human performance can cause process losses with severity that affects reliability, occupational safety, operational safety, Process and Public Safety with impacts on the neighboring community. The investigation into the nature of this variability can indicate new ways of acting in Process Safety and in the review of tools and barriers to avoid accidents. We introduced the analysis of Accidents through the human factors network that interconnects the operational routine until the system stop and the accident. In terms of human performance, we indicate the relationships between behavioral aspects that affect cognitive quality and authorize, or trigger, chain events until the accident. At that moment, during the debate on deviation normalization, we discussed the importance of the following aspects: Human Behavior, Variability and Compensation; Effectiveness of Security Barriers; Circulation of Information in the Construction of Knowledge during the decision-making process; Lessons learned from the Military Services for the Chemical Industry; and what is the noise source for the mind map of the engineer and operator in the industry.

The Effectiveness of safeguard tools for Process Safety depends on their integration with Human Reliability in the Technological environment, both during the design and operation phase. Incorrect conceptual assumptions in establishing these barriers are: (a) The Technical Design is inherently safe; (b) LOPA Protection Layers are independent; and (c) The Operational Discipline privileges the standard without considering the dynamism of the risk, works with punishment and positive reinforcement, simplifying prevention actions.

This work intends to discuss the concepts and corrections in the steps and in the application of Process Safety tools. The 1st Layer of LOPA does not consider the reasons for human errors in the project discussion, it only inserts the Engineering ignorance coefficient, increasing the plant's capacity to compensate for the reduction in reliability due to human error, which is true, this situation makes it difficult the work of process optimization and load increase.

On the other hand, the Sociotechnical Project of industrial installations is inherently Safe as it considers the integration of social and technical factors to design the defenses that avoid the reduction of reliability and the accident. The LOPA Protection Layers are not independent, making the current Perception of Security unrealistic, bringing a false comfort of efficiency, for example, of 80%, when in fact, we are halfway in relation to Security, 50%. The lack of a multidisciplinary vision in the investigation of routine events also affects the result, bringing a false security with the respective recommendations for the Project Analysis: Preliminary Risk and Hazard Analysis, HAZOP, LOPA, Bowtie, Vulnerability Analysis, Tolerance Analysis regarding the level of Risk from the Quantitative Analysis, Failure Mode, and Effect - FMEA, Safety Instrumented System - SIS, and Failure Tree Analysis - FTA. Thus, the Vision of only tangible issues, without discussing culture, communication, and cooperation, becomes an incomplete object of research in relation to the causes of a probable accident.

On the other hand, the operational discipline tool OD COO, follows the ABC line, Antecedent Behavior Consequence, reinforcing actions considered correct - operational conduct - making the negative consequences visible and repressing what can cause the accident. In addition, the technical, operational, and social complexity is not discussed, reducing the visibility of the intrinsic changes and mechanisms of action of the hazard.

The Mind Map changes, decisions change according to undiscussed aspects such as social conflicts, changes in priority, and changing motivating factors for work. This discussion of the effectiveness of Process Safety tools will indicate adjustments, calibrations, and changes necessary to bring about a real and non-fictional decrease in the probability of accidents and disasters.