"Hello? Can Everyone See My Screen Now?" - Conducting an Effective PHA from a Distance

As the ability to travel and on-site access to chemical manufacturing facilities disappeared in early 2020 due to a global pandemic, operating companies have had to find new ways to complete process safety management (PSM) activities such as process hazard analyses (PHAs), audits, and incident investigations. These activities typically rely on personal interactions with manufacturing staff and field inspections of the equipment and facility siting. While crucial risk management activities could be completed with a “just get it done” attitude to weather the current work climate, but such an approach could potentially result in gaps in risk assessment and mitigation. How can we do better than this? What best practices for virtual PSM tasks, forced upon us due to external circumstances, could permanently increase our work flexibility, reduce travel costs, and improve our efficiency?

This paper will consider some of the potential pitfalls and challenges in conducting risk management activities virtually, focusing on hazard identification and risk assessment techniques such as PHAs. These include practical issues, like communications technology and conducting field walk-downs, and softer skills, like effective facilitation, managing team dynamics, and ensuring effective contributions of all participants. When PHAs require multiple lengthy sessions and a high level of interaction with all team members, maintaining team focus can be more challenging in a virtual environment. Effectively collecting and distributing the study’s process safety information (PSI) to all team members may require both creative methods and new technology. In-person field tours of the process may be almost impossible, but could a thoughtfully curated collection of photos or videos be an effective substitute? Tools and best practices developed at one operating company to make virtual process hazard analyses less bad and less ugly, and maybe even better in the long-term as a result of these adaptations, will be presented and discussed.