Safety Metrics

Guidelines for process safety metrics / Center for Chemical Process Safety, p. cm. 

D, Cummings, The Evolution and Current Status of Process Safety Metrics in DuPont (presented at AIChE Spring National Meeting, April 2008)... 

Full Listing of Potential Process Safety Metrics to Consider (Based on Risk Based Process Safety Elements)... 

The American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) and the Center for Chemical Process Safety (CCPS) express their appreciation and gratitude to all members of the Process Safety Metrics Subcommittee and their CCPS member companies for their generous support and technical contributions in the preparation of these Guidelines. The AIChE and CCPS also express their gratitude to the team of authors from AcuTech Consulting Group. 

This interest led to the CCPS Technical Steering Committee authorizing the creation of a project committee to develop a book of guidelines for the development and use of leading and lagging process safety metrics. To achieve broader industry acceptance, CCPS invited representatives from many chemical and petroleum companies, trade associations, labor groups, regulators, and academics involved in the field of process safety, as well as other key stakeholders or subject mater experts to participate in this committee s activities. 

To provide guidance to companies on how to collect, evaluate, and communicate process safety metrics ... 

To encourage the adoption of a set of consensus process safety metrics comparable to occupational safety metrics. 

Incidents which meet the threshold of severity which should be reported as part of the process safety metric. 

This book is organized in a logical flow for developing and implementing a process safety metrics program. Because some readers may read the book from beginning to end while others may select specific chapters, the chapters have been written to stand alone as well as part of the book as a whole. 

Chapter 2—Why Implement Process Safety Metrics, especially the role of metrics in management... 

Chapter 8—Improving Industry-Wide Performance through the adoption of common process safety metrics and definitions within companies and industry sectors, and across the processing industries... 

Chapter 9—Future Trends in the Development and Use of Process Safety Metrics for improving process safety performance and broader societal interests... 

It is hoped that process safety performance throughout the process industries will improve as an increasing number of companies adopt more extensive and more rigorous process safety metrics as part of their process safety management systems. Companies and facilities that do this should ultimately see improvement... 

Process safety metrics are critical indicators for evaluating a process safety management system s performance. Tracking the number of process safety incidents is one common measure of performance, but merely tracking the number of incidents after the fact is insufficient to understand the system failure that allowed the incident to occur and what can be done to prevent a recurrence. More than one metric and more than one type of metric are needed to monitor performance of a process safety management system. A comprehensive process safety management system should contain a variety of different metrics that monitor different dimensions of the system and the performance of all critical elements. 

A process safety metric is an observable measure that provides insights into a concept —process safety — that is difficult to measure directly. 

Different metrics may be used to describe past performance, predict future performance, and encourage behavioral change. They are a means to evaluate the overall system performance and to develop a path toward superior process safety performance. This is accomplished by identifying where the current performance falls within a spectrum of excellent-to-poor performance. Such information will allow executives and site management to develop plans to address the specific improvement opportunities that could lead to measurable improvement in process safety. Good process safety metrics reinforce a process safety culture that promotes the belief that process safety incidents are preventable, that improvement is continuous, and that policies and procedures are necessary and will be followed. Continuous improvement is necessary and any improvement program will be based on measurable elements. Therefore, to continuously improve performance, organizations must develop and implement effective process safety metrics. 

---