An Inherently Safer Process Checklist

This checklist may be used to stimulate the thinking of inherent safety review and process hazard analysis teams, and any other individuals or groups working on process improvements. It is intended to promote blue-sky or out-of the-box thinking, and to generate ideas that might be usable in an existing facility or a plant of the future concept. 

This checklist should not be used in a rote yes/no manner, nor is it necessary to answer every question. The idea is to consider what might be possible, and then determine what is feasible. The checklist should be reviewed periodically throughout the life cycle of the process. As technology changes, what was once impossible becomes possible, and what was once infeasible becomes feasible. 

Users of this checklist may find it helpful to rephrase questions in order to prompt maximum creativity for example how might it be possible to. . . This approach can lead users to consider alternative means for reducing the hazard level inherent in the process. 

The topics for this checklist have been taken from CCPS (1993b) and Bollinger et al. (1996). Every effort was made to ensure that this checklist is comprehensive therefore, there may be some redundancy or overlap in questions among the different sections. It should be noted that some of the items in this checklist employ a very broad concept of inherent safety, as presented by Bollinger et al. (1996). As such, they may address inherent aspects of passive, engineered or even administrative controls, rather than the narrower inherent safety conception of reducing the underlying process hazards that must be contained and controlled to safely operate a facility. 

Do the following strategies reduce inventories of hazardous raw materials, intermediates, and/or finished products  

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