Safety work systems

The UK government enquiry into the Piper Alpha disaster in the North Sea in 1988 has had a significant impact on working practices and equipment and has helped to improve offshore safety around the world. One result has been the development of a Safety Management System (SMS) which is a method of integrating work practices, and is a form of quality management system. Major oil companies have each developed their own specific SMS, to suit local environments and modes of operation, but the SMS typically addresses the following areas (recommended by the Cullen Enquiry into the Piper Alpha disaster) ... 

Are you involved m the transport of dangerous substances by road (replaced by IND(G)234L) COSHH and Section 6 of the Health and Safety at Work Act Permit-to-work systems. (Chemical manufacturing)... 

All prequalifications for health and safety work must be approved by an assigned health and safety professional. A rating system will be assigned to all contractors regardless of work conditions. The rating system is as follows ... 

Develop specific process safety management systems. Working within the pian, the task groups will develop specific systems and procedures for implementing PSM. The Division A team will focus on its own operations, while (name s) group will direct its efforts toward the other divisions. 

This book complements previous work by CCPS in describing how to undertake the design, development, and installation of process safety management systems. 

Accountability is the obligation to answer for one s performance with respect to expectations, goals, and objectives. It is an important element of an effective process safety management system. To improve safety, the risk associated with human errors must be reduced. The work situation is the predominant cause of human errors and management has control over the work situation. 

The failure data for these rates is obtained from maintenance work requests supplemented by incidence reports and Licensee Event Reports from the 1975-1980 time period. The work requests provide a complete history of all repairs performed at Oconee. They are not restricted to safety-related systems, they are written during all modes of unit operation, and they are not produced in response to licensing-based criteria. 

Familiarization with plant hazards, rules and safety practices, security Clear delineation of work, responsibilities and handover (See also maintenance, permit-to-work systems, personal protection, site restrictions, access, modifications, personal hygiene etc.)... 

These process safety management systems help ensure that facilities are designed, constructed, operated, and maintained with appropriate controls in place to prevent serious accidents. However, despite these precautions, buildings close to hazardous process plants have presented serious risks to the people who work in them. This observation is prompted by the fact that some buildings, because of their design and construction, have collapsed when subjected to comparatively moderate accidental explosions, with serious injury or fatality to the occupants. Conversely, experience indicates that personnel located outdoors and away from such buildings, if subjected to the same blast, may have a lower likelihood of serious injury or fatality. 

General References Center for Chemical Process Safety (CCPS), Guidelines for Hazard Evaluation Procedures, Second Edition with Worked Examples, AIChE, September 1992. CCPS, Guidelines for Technical Management of Chemical Process Safety, AIChE, 1989. CCPS, Guidelines for Auditing Process Safety Management Systems, AIChE, 1993. 

Safe Automation and ANSI/ISA 84.01-1996 served as significant technical references for the first international standard, IEC 61511, issued by the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC). In the United States, IEC 61511 was accepted by ISA as ISA 84.00.01-2004, replacing the 1996 standard. In 2004, the European Committee for Electrotechnical Standardization (CENELEC) and the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) recognized IEC 61511 as a consensus standard for the process industry. IEC 61511 covers the complete process safety management life cycle. With its adoption, this standard serves as the primary driving force behind the work processes followed to achieve and maintain safe operation using safety instrumented systems. 

Using the 7-stage protocol, the previous accidents can be explained and causal weaknesses in the safety management system of the company can be identified, i.e. the identified latent conditions on the tactical and operational control levels. To test the working of the developed protocol further, in the next Chapter practice will be approached from hindsight to verify whether other accidents can also be explained. If this is a success, practice will be approached pro-actively. 

The distributed control system (DCS) hardware areas are often referred to as "process computer rooms." I/O Rooms contain the incoming and outgoing wiring, cables and data highway links, and often small transformers and other related electrical equipment. Often, additional space is needed for a master process engineering computer terminal/work station for process control system changes and for critical safety instrumented systems (SIS) for interlocks and emergency shutdowns. 

This optional attachment is used to promote continuous improvement of the entire safety management system. It is a checklist for anyone to use as a guide when auditing incident investigation activity. The facility from which this example was derived includes a similar checklist for each safe work practice at the site. 

The team s recommendations (immediate and long term) as to steps that might be taken to prevent any recurrence of incidents of a similar nature. These recommendations should not be confined to such matters as plant modification, but should, if appropriate, embrace training (retraining), assessment of operational procedures, and strengthening of safety measures. Recommendations that improve work systems and conditions make it harder for people to make mistakes. The team should also indicate what... 

Z. Zurakowski, A Study of the Applicability of ISO/IEC 17799 and the German Baseline Protection Manual to the Needs of Safety Critical Systems, Final Report, March 2003, on work carried out for JRC ISPRA under contract N° 20215-2002-12 F1EI ISP GB., 268 pages, (www.ewics.org)... 

This is a check of all the standard panel alarm lights and a review of any work that remains to be accomplished. (This panel alarm light audit is not for the new technology of distributed control instrumentation.) As a cross-check, a review of all the out-of-service tags of the previous week will be made. Each of the safety shutdown system valves that have been bypassed during the previous week will be inspected in the field to ensure that they are neither blocked nor operating with the bypass open. 

Set A the seven old cases all concerned local sites with which we had had extensive direct contacts in the period of 1985-1990, either in the form of contract research projects or by supervising students working in those plants. The insights in their safety management systems in general and in their NMMS projects in particular were updated in 1991. 

An effective safety permit system was not enforced with Phillips or contractor employees, especially line opening and hot work permits. 

Guidelines for Hazard Evaluation Procedures, 2nd ed. with Worked Examples, 1992. Guidelines for Implementing Process Safety Management Systems, 1994. 

Basic division in a process safety management system that correlates to the type of work that must be done (e.g., management of change [MOC]). 

Collecting the correct information to monitor and understand performance of the process safety management system, and its separate elements, can provide an unbiased and comprehensive view of system performance. This will alert the appropriate personnel to weaknesses in the process safety system. A companywide versus a site-specific approach to process safety auditing, evaluation, and improvement not only deals with better prioritization of identified improvement work but potentially provides better auditing and evaluation against those conditions that one site may accept as normal/acceptable over time. 

Process safety audits are completed to understand how well the process safety management system is working. Process... 

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