(47c) How to Evaluate Process Safety Culture

At first glance it may seem that organizational culture is subjective and therefore difficult to measure. Indeed, even the definition of culture falls into the soft side of process safety. This paper will show that an objective approach can be taken to survey and define process safety culture. With this data gap analysis can be performed that identifies strengths and weaknesses so that process safety performance can be improved.

The survey method used starts with the CCPS process safety pillars and categorizes questions according to the pillar elements, principles and essential features required for excellence. The appropriate data collecting technique is shown that will give statistically meaningful results. Examples are given of grouping results by safety pillar categories and demographics of the survey population. Finally, two methods of gap analysis will be shown so that improvement plans can be made.