The Need for Tracking and Measurement

In the example discussed in Section 4.2, the company found that by integrating its accident/incident investigations across its process safety and occupational safety activities, it has saved one year of duplicate time to date by avoiding conflicting models and coordinating training efforts. This represents a 50 percent reduction in effort. 

Some measures of PSM and ESH performance are easy to identify, establish and track. These include accident rates, effluent tonnages and composition and number of days lost to illness. Almost all of these traditional performance measures are end-of-pipe that is, they measure the output of the management system and allow corrective action only after a failure has occurred. The ideal measurement system identifies potential problems ahead of actual failure allowing corrective action to be taken. This requires using techniques such as audits and hazard assessments. 

By identifying the potential sources of failures, it is possible to develop controls to address those hazards. These controls might be passive physical items (e.g., dikes, walls, vents), active physical systems (e.g., fire suppression, pressure limiters, temperature controls), or administrative procedures. 

A hazard assessment also provides a means of documenting the need for the various controls and the evaluation of the sufficiency of each control. 

There are two ways in which the measurement system is likely to be used. The first is to compare the baseline before integration to whatever progress has been made at a given point in time. The second is as a longer term measure of performance of the integrated systems. 

---