Process safety program

Government regulations reqmre hazard and risk analysis as part of process safety management (PSM) programs. These are part of the process safety programs of many chemical process facilities. 

To ensure project-related safety, health, and environmental issues have been identified and resolved, the refiner should have in effect a process safety program that confirms the project complies with OSHA requirements. 

Reactive chemical hazard management is one element of an overall process safety program, but is emphasized through thermal hazards analysis. 

Reactive chemicals hazard management is part of the overall process safety program, which is applied regardless of regulatory coverage. 

Plant Guidelines for Technical Management of Chemical Process Safety, ISBN 0-8169-0499-5, American Institute of Chemical Engineers, Center for Chemical Process Safety (AlChE/CCPS), New York, 1992. This practical, easy-to-use book, with a list price i)f 120, offers specific approaches to various process safety programs. The authors designed... 

Those within a company who wish to make comparisons between sites with process safety programs... 

Metrics should relate to the elements of the process safety system. Poorly selected metrics that do not specifically relate to the execution of process safety elements will not provide an accurate evaluation of process safety system performance. Occupational injury and illness reporting rates are sometimes used to judge overall safety performance, and this metric does track the incidence of employee injuries quite well. However, this rate does not reflect the effectiveness of the process safety system. Occupational safety is quite important to the health and well-being of employees, but the metrics involved in assessing the occupational safety performance are not appropriate for process safety system evaluation the detailed elements of a process safety program differ markedly fl-om an occupational safety program (as discussed in Chapter 3). 

Some metrics, such as number of fires or number of process safety incidents, may individually portray the performance of a process safety program. Other metrics may have information that is valuable but requires an understanding of the underlying meaning of the metric. Examples may include ... 

A process safety program must be relevant to the company and its operations. The program must also be relevant to employees personal safety and success. The link between safety actions and safety outcomes is most obvious in operations that directly handle highly hazardous materials. Unfortunately, that nexus may not be as obvious in the systems that support and are otherwise indirectly associated with hazardous materials. Appropriately developed, implemented, and communicated process safety metrics can help educate personnel on the importance of different aspects of the process safety system. 

When considered in isolation, many of the elements appear to be the most important. For example, Worl orce Involvement could be considered to be the key element because, if the employees do not participate in the process safety program, then that program will not function... 

It is likely that the number of companies and facilities covered by the standard will increase substantially. Many of them will be small organizations that do not currently have process safety programs. 

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