(127b) Understanding How to Integrate Humans into the 4 Pillars of a Process Safety Management System: Human Performance, Safety Culture, and Human Error

As stated by AiChE’s Risk Based Process Safety, there are four pillars (or foundational blocks) of a successful process safety management system (PSMS)—commit to process safety, understand risks and hazards, manage risks, learn from experience—and each of these pillars has separate elements. When originally developed, the focus of a PSMS was to mitigate the risks associated with any mechanical, physical, and chemical processes in a system. However, it has been understand for quite some time that humans not only introduce risks that must be understood and managed, but also that it is humans who will often be the ones managing the risks. This requires an understanding of how humans “work” in order to be able to predict how humans will behave (i.e., either creating or mitigating a hazard). This presentation will illustrate how to integrate understandings of humans directly into the four pillars and elements of a PSMS. The authors will specifically discuss Human Performance, Safety Culture, and Human Error—what each of these are and how they can support a successful PSM.