Safety suggestions systems

This document is intended as a typical guideline and reference book that may be applied at petroleum, petrochemical and chemical facilities. It is suggested that this document is used as a practical reference to prepare the safety review requirements for these and related industries, and their process safety management systems. 

Three levels of risk are suggested here (low, medium, and high) although some pharmaceutical and healthcare companies may like to consider five levels of risk to match the system integrity levels defined by lEC/ISO 61508 for safety critical systems. Each system should be rated against a number of weighted risk factors to determine an overall level of risk. Seven example risk factors are considered in Table 14.4 ... 

Percentage of critical instruments or safety instrumented systems calibrated on time (e.g., within the timelines suggested by the assessment to meet the requirements of lEC (International Electrotechnical Commission Standard) 61511)... 

Well, there are certainly no shortages of suggestions of how to do this, and what a safety management system should contain in order to achieve it. Many textbooks and consultancies can provide checklists and pro-formas to create a coherent safety management system, yet such a formulaic approach can be seen as a little incoherent for the management of something that doesn t actually happen, within the context of a messy, inconsistent, and constantly changing social reality. 

Although it could be suggested that positioning safety as a separate entity is a simple rhetorical manifestation of reference to an abstract concept, reflective of safety management systems, it is equally suggestible that it is prec/se/y the associations with ownership and responsibility that are important here, and have actually helped develop our shared understandings. In constructing safety in this way, it is set apart from any personal responsibility, ownership or action and ultimately becomes either its own, or more likely within the context, someone else s responsibility. 

So if current ideas of safety on site are not really working, what can be done Well, as the introduction to this chapter suggested -the ideas and understandings of safety unpacked above are indeed helpful. They are able to illustrate what safety is on site -and that it is all a bit of a mess is itself well worth knowing. However, it would perhaps be more helpful to be able to understand these ideas in a more coherent way - and whenever the complexities of both people and the social worlds are explored, very often the concept of culture comes to the fore. This is what Choudhry et a/. (2007 1003) were alluding to in the quote found at the start of this chapter. Where complexity and dissonance start to emerge around safety, the check-sheets and tick boxes of proceduralised safety management systems become less relevant... 

Many findings suggested installation of redundant instrumentation. Consideration should be given to the use of Safety Instrumented Systems across the facility. 

An important aspect of moderation concerns the use of space between equipment items. Blast overpressure and concentrations of toxic gas from releases fall off exponentially with distance. Inherent safety suggests that it is better to protect systems from the effects of an explosion by moving them apart from one another than by putting a blast wall between them. If equipment items are spaced well apart from one another, there is also less risk of a confined vapor cloud forming with its potential for a very destructive explosion. 

Safety involves all people, and safety activities that facilitate the implementation of the safety management system should involve everyone. Employees should be informed of the facts at all times and should be asked to give input and suggestions on aspects of safety that directly or indirectly concern them. 

Coordinating the safety suggestion schemes, and managing the safety website and other communication systems... 

Figure lA Suggested System Safety Assessment strategy for the case study. For a larger print of this illustration. Please see www.aircraftsystemsafety.com. 

One aspect of comparison is not mentioned the amoimt of precise design and development suggestions to achieve a safe system. Such precise suggestions can be related to the system (safety) design, e.g. software or hardware redimdancy and failure tolerance, as well as techniques and measures. We think that precise recommendations are very important for the application of a standard concerning safety-critical systems. 

What is provided are some basic suggestions and ground rules to follow when considering or reviewing your performance-based safety reward system. 

The Three Es of Safety concept in Chapter 3 suggests some approaches for preventing unsafe acts. Education, enforcement, and engineering all have a role. Enthusiasm, a fourth E, has a role, too. Also, there are other concepts that apply. Chapters 32 addresses procedures, rules, and training. Chapter 36 discusses safety management systems. 

Assume that management responded favorably to a suggestion made by a safety professional that an internally conducted survey of the organization s safety culture would be beneficial. The purpose would be to gather the perceptions of all levels of employment on the quality of the safety management system in place. It should be understood that for those who participate in the exercise, their perceptions are their reality. The result of such an exercise wiil be a culture survey. 

Object-oriented programming languages typically rely on dynamic memory allocation to allocate all objects of non-primitive types. Therefore, if safety-critical systems are constructed using object technology, it is necessary to establish policies for the safe use of dynamic memory allocation. We suggest here two such policies. 

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