Process Safety - You Don't Improve What You Don't Measure

I've been in Kuala Lumpur delivering training to industry professionals this week. Due to the nature of the course, we discussed Texas City, Bhopal and Piper Alpha as relevant case studies highlighting just what can go wrong. It is now almost 25 years since the Bhopal catastrophe and thankfully the industry has made significant steps forward in reducing the likelihood of such incidents happening in future. However, I'm sure that we all can agree that we need to keep on pushing for improvement in this respect and that complacency in PSM is absolutely not an option.

We all know what can happen when process safety is not managed adequately; Texas City, Flixborough, Seveso, Bhopal, Piper Alpha amongst many, many others. These incidents have enormous impacts; for the people killed, hurt or otherwise affected by the incidents and for the organisations involved - in terms of cost, reputation and business continuity.

Yet many organisations that want to improve process safety still struggle with defining the right metrics, particularly in the case of leading indicators.

From a number of discussions with experts in this field, it is clear that there are sometimes differing views on exactly what should be measured and there is acceptance that, in some cases, the measures need to be site and process specific. One thing which is universally agreed, however, is that leading indicators are highly valuable to give an early warning that things could go wrong.

For those new to this subject, the guide from Center for Chemical Process Safety, 'Process Safety - You Don't Improve What You Don't Measure' , is an excellent starting point. Click here for link