Safety Metrics Trending

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

Without measuring performance, it will be very difficult, if not impossible, to gauge the success of improvement efforts or to detect gradual, complex trends within process safety system performance. Process safety metrics provide the data needed to evaluate and monitor performance. 

Communicating process safety metrics should match the needs of the intended audiences to maximize the benefit for them, and the data communicated will vary depending upon those needs. Metrics reports for upper management usually contain aggregated or normalized data, focus on trends, and are issued on a periodical basis. Personnel that use the results to carry out their day-to-day responsibilities usually need detailed data that is reported frequently. The data reporting frequency is usually dictated by the audience needs, as discussed in Section 6.2.3, and timely reporting is important for effective communications. 

FUTURE TRENDS IN THE DEVELOPMENT AND USE OF PROCESS SAFETY METRICS... 

This has resulted in less non value-added activities, which is necessary in lean to increase flow. A lean culture is also promoted where everyone ought to be committed in adopting the principles, otherwise the benefits would not be fully realized if the company s employees do not cooperate. Recommendations from the students also stated that additional metrics and transformation strategies be explored to further see the benefits of lean outside of just reducing WIP and lead time. Health and safety metrics can be added since lean tools can also be used to improve health and safety measures. Furthermore, with the growing trend of going green, lean can be applied to reduce environmental impacts and... 

Proper safety metrics requires the proper analysis of the collected data. The purpose of the data analysis is to make comparisons between the results and the goals or benchmarks. Significant trends or differences between the obtained results and the benchmarks should be identified. There are a number of statistical procedures that can be used to determine if there are any trends in the data or if the results meet what is anticipated. 

With these activity-based performance measures, there is also a variety of safety metrics that can be used to assess program performance. As identified by OSHA in studies ofVPP organizations, OSHA injury incidence rates, lost work day rates, and workers compensation losses are a few safety metrics that have been correlated to the performance of the VPP criteria activities. These measures can easily be expanded to include unsafe behaviors, accident trends, and near misses. 

John Mogford, at the time senior group vice president, safety operations, for BP, conceded this blind spot in 2006 in his speech to the Center for Chemical Process Safety, 2nd Global Congress on Process Safety Do not get seduced by personal accident measures they have their place but do not warn of incidents (Editor s note such as the BP Texas City refinery explosion). There is a need to capture the right metrics that indicate process safety trends. ... 

With all of this information, you can also trend accident results, open hazards, or other data. This will give you something substantial to use to develop a set of metrics, key performance indicators, or key safety or risk indicators, or to assess whether the hazard controls are really worth the cost (or the opposite, if the lack of hazard controls is worth the price). 

Lagging indicators are metrics used to measure past occupational safety and health performance. The results can be used to identify negative safety and health trends and identify corrective action necessary to prevent future work related injuries and illnesses. 

---