Establish a PSM Team

Every company is unique, and the success of an initiative such as PSM often depends on the mesh between theory and practice the objectives you have established and the context in which you plan to meet them. The framework defined (as in the previous section), while specific, is essentially theoretical different companies might identify the same basic PSM elements, but apply them very differently in their own organizations. 

Thus the next step, once a PSM framework is established, is to gain a practical understanding of your company s culture and management style, and in general how we do tilings here. This will define the company-specific context in which you can plan for practical application. 

Much of the following section discusses the basics of establishing and working with intracompany, multidisciplinary teams. If you are familiar and experienced with this approach to problem-solving, you may wish to skip to Section 3.4, Define Company-Specific Attributes.  

A listing of useful reference materials concerning teamwork and organization appears in the Bibliography. 

Note that the term team can be used very loosely. In smaller companies, or those where key individuals cannot participate consistently, your team may comprise individuals whom you can consult informally at key stages in the process. 

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To achieve these goals, we propose the following preliminary action plan. Establish a PSM Task Team. 

The way in which a PSM team documents its activities is best determined in collaboration between the PSM champion and his/her sponsors, as part of establishing groundrules for the effort. In making this decision, keep in mind the kinds of documentation that will prove useful over time, remembering that the PSM initiative will involve a number of different people and tasks over a period of months, not days. 

Develop a plan. Based on established goals and current status, the teams will develop detailed plans for implementing a process safety management system, including projections of time and staffpwer requirements and other resource needs. When completed, these plans will be our blueprint for PSM implementation, subject to refinement based on experience. 

Measurement of performance. Quality Management requires that measures of performance be established for every activity. These measures include end-of-pipe measurement, such as amounts of material released into the environment or injury rates, and in-process measures of how efficiently you are managing, such as time to review safety improvement proposals or total resources expended on PSM. Each team should be required to identify potential performance measures for the processes they are developing and the activities these processes manage. Many of the end-of-pipe measures will already exist these should be critically examined to ensure that they truly measure performance and are not unduly influenced by other factors. For example, the number of accidents in a fleet of road vehicles is almost directly dependent on the number of miles driven with no improvement in performance, a reduction in miles driven would reduce the number of accidents. 

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