(32by) Optimizing Process Safety for Operational Excellence

Process safety is known to establish a risk-based culture and reduce the facilities risk profile. Process safety implementation needs to be proportional to the site risk to ensure an effective program instead of overly complicated and cumbersome resource extensive. Process Safety Audit and Management reviews are designed to assess process safety management system performance. This paper outlines some of the typical pit falls for various auditing approaches and suggests how a process safety gap analysis/assessment tool will provide the best of all worlds and will take process safety beyond the typical regulatory compliance approach and move towards operational excellence. This is particularly applicable to the organizations with worldwide operations operating under different jurisdictions. The paper discusses leveraging the existing HSE fundamental programs to complement and convey the process safety message in a consistent and relatable manner providing a better comprehension to the operating staff. Lastly, the paper talks about making the process safety program relatable for each level within the organization. The way executive leadership looks at the process safety output is different to how it’s been seen at the site level by the local leaders to the plant operator. Hence, we would need to present the information in a manner which is meaningful to the target audience to fully integrate the process safety as part of our business and as a tool to achieve operational excellence. In the authors case, the facilities risk profile along with the aging assets were used to make strategic decisions around the long-term future of chemical business operations and company’s future investments.