Process Safety Leadership from the Boardroom to the Frontline

In 1989, CCPS first identified “leadership support” as a fundamental requirement for process safety. Experience gained by CCPS member companies and others over the past 30 years has certainly borne this out. Any company that has had sustained success in reducing process safety incidents has engaged all levels of leadership in process safety. Leaders set policy and risk criteria, ensure implementation of appropriate barriers, and establish management systems to manage the broad operational, technical, and support functions required to ensure proper maintenance of these barriers. Your level in the organization cannot be too high or too low to demonstrate, and to develop, process safety leadership.

Since its 1988 publication Guidelines for Technical Management of Process safety, CCPS has developed numerous support tools for leaders. However, until 2019, no comprehensive resource for leaders existed. CCPS’s new book Process Safety Leadership from the Boardroom to the Frontline has closed that gap, providing leaders at all levels and functions with essential tools to help them fulfill their process safety responsibilities.

Many companies have made impressive progress in the technical and leadership aspects of process safety. Some companies may believe they have achieved excellence in process safety performance, and some of these may actually have done so. However, lessons learned from major incidents at companies thought to have strong process safety performance has shown that few have achieved the level of process safety excellence they believed – or needed.

At whatever level of excellence you have attained, just maintaining that level requires continual effort. This paper will summarize what you, as a leader at any level of any company that handles or produces hazardous materials, need to know and do to continually evaluate and enhance process safety leadership across your organization – even if the organization believes it has already achieved excellence.

The paper will include a couple of case studies demonstrating Leadership and Professionalism supporting strong Process Safety performance and demonstrating the support of business needs. The case studies will show the potential tensions between proper Process Safety activities and business needs, and how to resolve with a data based/engineering calculations approach.