Staying safe

Dr Stephen Bater FEI, Management Consultant, highlights the latest revisions to the Energy Institute’s process safety guidance, in transition to a zero carbon world.

The Energy Institute’s High-level process safety framework for process safety management has been revised and will be published in 3Q2021. Developed in 2010 by the industry for the industry, the Framework has successfully been applied to many industrial settings, including hydrocarbon storage, high hazard manufacturing and a range of complex hydrocarbon and chemical processing facilities.

Since the first edition was published, many new catastrophic process safety incidents have occurred, with tragic and avoidable consequences. As world-renowned process safety expert Trevor Kletz once observed: ‘Accidents, with a few exceptions, are not caused by lack of knowledge, but by a failure to use the knowledge that is available.’

It is clear that managing complex operations in process and high-hazard industries such as refineries and petrochemical complexes is, and always will be, challenging. Operating companies are increasing their efforts to reduce the risk of catastrophic events, such as the release of toxic, reactive or explosive chemicals that can damage the environment or plant assets, as well as attempting to prevent injury or death to employees and the general public and damage to the environment. Confirming the safety of employees, protection of the environment and physical plant assets in the event of an unexpected process incident can never be underestimated.

With the transition to meet the demands of achieving net zero carbon emission goals, there has been a shift to the development of new techniques and technologies for energy and removing carbon from the economy, whilst not compromising social or economic standards to meet these challenges. This presents a new challenge to these sectors on how they manage their risk profile effectively.

New opportunities

Process safety management (PSM) can be defined as ‘managing the systems and procedures that prevent the uncontrolled release of energy’. It is vital to ensuring safe and continued operations to prevent major accident hazards, major accidents to the environment or damage to the operational assets. Basically, preventing and mitigating fatal, serious injury, environmental damage and catastrophic incident potential in a wide range of high-hazard industry.

PSM has traditionally been associated with the oil and gas and chemical process sectors, where the PSM Framework has gained traction and there are process safety specialists embedded in many organisations to ensure that process safety is managed effectively. However, there is a range of newer emerging industries where the principles of process safety management are fully applicable but there is arguably a competency/knowledge gap that potentially could result in catastrophic incidents that are totally avoidable.

Do the leaders in these sectors ‘know what they don’t know’? There can be a paradigm shift in risk management as these sectors embrace the knowledge, systems and experience that already exist and implement the Energy Institute’s PSM Framework. Adopting PSM systems in these industries not only reduces the risk of a catastrophic incident, but also enhances productivity and reliability by reducing the likelihood of an unplanned and costly outage.

To emphasise the relevance of PSM to a broader industry sector and recalibrate the view that PSM is only applicable to the traditional hydrocarbon and chemical processing industries. some examples of the potential major hazards associated with relatively new and emerging industries are outlined in Table 1.

Table 1: Potential major hazards in relatively new and emerging industries

Every year there are incidents at anaerobic digestion plants and substations that have resulted in large energy releases, explosions and spillages. Several have been catastrophic and resulted in multiple fatalities, serious injuries, environmental damage and huge financial loss.

To prevent these catastrophic and avoidable events industries must implement robust arrangements for the management of process safety. To help contextualise this, there are six tenets of process safety that senior leaders in high-hazard, process and renewable energy operations need to satisfy themselves that are being managed effectively:

• Major hazards are recognised and the worst potential consequences are understood throughout the business.

• Plant and equipment are provided which is ‘fit for purpose’ to reduce the risks from the major hazards to tolerable levels.

• Systems and procedures are provided which ensure proper operation for plant and equipment and which maintain their integrity.

• Sufficient staff, with appropriate experience and training are provided to implement the systems and procedures.

• Emergency procedures that respond adequately to foreseeable incidents are both in place and practised.

• Incident investigation and monitoring and auditing of performance take place to learn from experience and promote continuous improvement.

The EI’s revised PSM Framework has four focus areas, 20 elements and 200 expectations of what should be done to deliver safe and incident-free operations and have robust arrangements in place for emergency preparedness and response to mitigate any unplanned events.

To emphasise the complex and often fluid challenges of managing process safety effectively, the revised Framework introduces the PSM Sand Cone Model for the four focus areas – see Figure 1. The model illustrates that with the complexity and dynamic requirements of managing high-risk processes and operations there can be no review and improvement without risk management; no risk management without risk identification and assessment; and no risk identification and assessment without process safety leadership.

Figure 1: EI PSM Sand Cone Model

Source: Energy Institute

It is clear that with the transition to a zero carbon world there will be significant changes in the energy industry. Some sectors will reduce in size or potentially even disappear in the long term, such as oil and gas exploration. While others will grow to deliver society’s needs, such as renewable energy technologies and the circular economy, with new and emerging operations for waste and water processing of large amounts of waste material including organic, plastic, liquid and the associated material in large complex facilities and potentially anaerobic digesters to produce gas.

The hazard and risk profile will shift dramatically in this energy transition. As such, robust management systems, training and competency need to be aligned to this risk profile so that effective arrangements are in place to manage these risks.

Online support and auditing

To help existing and new users of the EI PSM Framework, several aligned tools have been developed, including a range of online tools with a fully aligned KPI dashboard to track PSM data effectively for those that cannot state with absolute confidence ‘We are safe’ (see Figure 2). The aim is to give all stakeholders the confidence that they can enjoy an incident-free day, every day. An online audit tool confirms the organisation’s status against the Framework’s elements and expectations, and an online e-learning course ensures that staff have the required knowledge and competence.

Figure 2: Process safety expectation KPIs dashboard

Source: Energy Institute

The online application allows for a systematic and robust audit of the process safety management system by internal and external auditors. This allows for a consistent approach to the audits and reporting to identify any gaps and inform continual improvement.

To be of value, senior management should be fully committed to the concept of auditing and its effective implementation within the organisation. The online audit tool allows senior management to see real-time visualisation and tracking of compliance.

New e-learning course

The EI launched a new e-learning training course – Introduction to Process Safety Management (www.bit.ly/ PRAug2021PSMcourse) – in September 2020, providing an integrated overview of the 20 elements of the PSM Framework. Delivered on the EI’s Learning Management System (Moodle) 15 modules comprise pre-recorded training presentations, ranging from 30–60 minutes each, case studies and an exercises and assessment component.

Following completion of the course, learners will be awarded an EI certificate of completion.

The training course is also delivered as a three-day public or in-company classroom course.

Fundamental focus

To help existing and emerging sectors manage process safety effectively needs a few fundamental requirements. Organisations need to develop and implement a robust management system aligned to the EI’s best practice PSM framework. They need to use the associated dashboard and audit tool to give themselves the confidence that it is being managed, because it is being measured. Finally, they need to train their staff at all levels, so they have the appropriate level of competence to manage process safety.

This is an important journey that an increasing number of traditional and emerging major hazard operators are embarking on as they strive to know that their process safety is under proper control and help them meet their fiscal targets.

To download a copy of the PSM Framework, visit www.bit.ly/PRAug2021Framework. For more information regarding the Framework’s online tools, contact Lee Allford, EI Manager – Process Safety & Decommissioning at e: lallford@energyinst.org