Although both EPA and OSHA use similar definitions to define who is an “incidental contractor” and those contractors who need to be evaluated to work in, on, or adjacent to a “covered process”, there is still much confusion on the intent of the “contractor element” and which type of contractors should be included and the type of review that should really be taking place.
The ideas and positions I take in this article will EXCEED the minimum requirements found in 1910.119(h) and 68.87(b) and are meant to shine a light on how a true chemical process safety management system can effectively manage its contractor safety program. First let’s look at the language “in, on, or adjacent to a covered process”. The OSHA and EPA language use the terms “on or adjacent” and do not mention “in” a covered process. In my career, I have found contractors working “in a covered process” that had even a greater potential to cause a PSM incident than those working “on the covered process”. Any contractor who enters the process area (this includes tank farms and support areas) do do more than “incidental work” should have been evaluated for their capabilities to work in that type of environment safely and meet all of the facility safety protocols. I have personally had issues with painting crews who were hired to paint within a covered process area. During one of my daily process walk-thrus, I noticed that all the relief valves were painted white. Upon further inspection I also came across all the nameplates on the pressure vessel were painted over and no longer legible, the vessel numbers, hazard labels, and PRCS signs were painted over, as well as all the sprinkler heads in the area were painted white. Does anyone not think this is a SERIOUS PROBLEM? After a day of tracking down who hired the painters and why were they not evaluated, the response was “they were not working on the covered process” and therefore the PSM program did not cover them. TRUE STORY and you can bet a MOC was started that evening to revise the “Contractor Safety Program” for the facility and when corporate got a copy of the incident investigation report (yes I treated this as a PSM incident based on the serious failure and breakdown of the system), the corporate level contractor program was revised as well. When the term “on the covered process” is used, this is clearer, as we like to call this as referring to “wrench-turning contractors”. These are the folks who are physically in touch with process components and have a high level of risk in their work. Most facilities include these types of contractors in their contractor safety programs; a few contractors may slip through the cracks from time to time, but most agree these are the contractors at the heart of soul of a PSM/RMP contractor safety program. A less clear type of contractor is one that is hired to work “adjacent” to a covered process. The word “adjacent” in its self is very subjective as one person may consider “adjacent” as within 10′ and some would call 100′ adjacent. From a chemical process safety perspective I like to define “adjacent” in the following manner…”if the work the contractor is doing can impact process safety and they are in the line of sight from within the physical battery limits of the covered process” then they are “adjacent” to this process and they fall with the contractor safety program. A good example of this is a crane performing a lift not associated with the covered process, but the boom length is such that if the crane was to collapse or tip over that it could contact some part of the covered process (or even a critical utility for the process) and this work needs to fall within our PSM Safety program (e.g. crane company evaluated, rigging company evaluated, contractors trained on process hazards, safe work permits – especially critical lift plans issued for the lift, etc.). This is how I define “in, on, and adjacent” to a covered process.
Another oversight that we see in our audits and incident investigations is that a host facility obtains the minimum safety data from a contractor just so they can check off that they “evaluated them”. Often times the facility will have no formal grading scale as to what a PASS/FAIL grade for an evaluation would be. What is an acceptable OSHA rate, Lost-Time Rate, EMR, etc? We even see the evaluation programs that have the contractor send the data directly to the purchasing group for “evaluation” and retention. We interview personnel from this group and no one in this group even knows what a Recordable Rate or Lost-Time Rate is, much less what an Experienced Modification Rate is; no one even looks at what the contractor sent in (sometimes we find the envelope is not even opened!). The evaluation sits in a file with some very incriminating data in it and comes to light only during an audit or worse, an incident. Even those facilities that review the data provided by the contractor, often times it is at the very least OSHA rates for the last three years. Have we ever have seen some SERIOUS manipulation of this type of data in our careers as safety professionals? Often times we see rates that reflect the entire contractor company’s performance and not the actual local group who will be doing the work. This little difference can have a HUGE IMPACT on process safety. For example, a company provides an OSHA Recordable rate of 0.35 for the company. This rate takes into account thousands of sales, office, and other support personnel, which can drastically dilute an OSHA rate. When asked for the OSHA rate based on the OSHA Logs from the physical address of the workers doing the work, we get a MUCH MORE CLEAR picture of their safety performance. Each physical location (e.g. shop) has to keep its own OSHA logs and therefore can calculate the rates for the workers working out of this specific shop. These are the rates we want, not some diluted rate that includes workers from all around the world that will never step foot on our property. Another crack in the armor is companies who have had “bad luck” in an certain industry and business begins to suffer, so they change their name, get a new insurance policy, and a new “workers comp” policy so they can get a “fresh start”. Their numbers look great, but that is “window dressing” and we should not be dazzled by such. One way this happens is a small specialty niche contractor is bought by a much larger contractor who wants to get into that line of work. The year before, the smaller contractor who got bought failed to be approved because of poor safety numbers and the lack of a formal safety program and training program. They get bought by the bigger contractor and in less than a year their OSHA rates drop 75%, EMR is now less than 1.0, and they have a safety and training program!?!?! Yet it is the exact same crew who shows up to do the work that was failed the year before. Are we really this blinded by the numbers?
Is the “safety performance and programs” of a contractor all we need to look at? How about the skills and qualifications of the actual contract worker who is being hired to perform the actual work? A perfect example of this rationale is…a facility hires a contractor to make repairs to one of their ASME Coded Pressure Vessels. Do we really think that the OSHA rate of the welding company is more critical than the qualifications of the actual welder(s)? We find from time to time companies that are forced to rerate vessels and in some case remove vessels from service because they do not have the documentation to show that the welding work was done by a “qualified welder”. The facility feels it is just a “missing paperwork” type issue and contacts the contractor to ask for the documentation, only to find out the welder did not hold current certification when he/she made the weld repair, thus VOIDING the ASME rating for the vessel. Serious? BIG TIME SERIOUS! When we investigate how such a major oversight could occur, we find that the contractor evaluation done on the contractor is the very basic evaluation and does not ask about skills or qualification of the crew that will be doing the work. The engineer had used the welding firm before for coded worker and thought the contractor would manage this aspect of the project since they were the “experts” in the field. When hiring a contractor, the first stage should be an evaluation of past safety performance, but we must continue on with an evaluation of the special skills and qualifications for contractors doing HIGHLY SPECIALIZED tasks. These tasks could include items like:
- Mechanical integrity inspections and testing on pipes, vessels, relief systems, instrumentation
- Physical repair work on critical infrastructure(s) within the process such vessels, piping, instrumentation, relief systems, etc.
The last type of contractor I want to cover is what I like to call “service contractors”. These are contractors who provide all kinds of different services to the facility that are NOT “wrench turning” services, but can have a HUGE impact on overall process safety.
If your facility utilizes 3rd party auditors for its 3-year audit, does the facility evaluate the actual auditor(s) who will perform the audit? Should this evaluation take place? Is this overkill? A waste of time? Actually, it is none of the above; but rather a CRITICAL QUALITY component of your overall process safety management system. A poor audit can allow deficiencies to go unnoticed and thus negatively impact process safety! In this group of “service contractors” I also like to include design contractor(s) who are hired to design or modify parts of the process including the safety systems within my process (e.g. relief systems, sprinklers/fire extinguishers, toxic gas monitors, etc.), the engineer/firm who did my relief valve study, the contractor who facilitated my PHA(s), the contractor/firm who wrote my operating and maintenance procedures, and lastly the 3rd party auditors used to conduct the 3-year audit. Each of these service providers plays a KEY ROLE in a chemical process safety management system and hiring the WRONG one can leave lots of large gaps in my safety process. Issues we have seen firsthand: annual maintenance for sprinklers and extinguishers done by a company not approved by the state or qualified for such inspections thus nullifying a key safeguard listed in PHAs; PHA’s facilitated by persons who have zero experience in the methodology utilized in the PHA or even worse ZERO experience or knowledge of the process hazards; mechanical firms doing relief valve studies who have no engineer on staff and thought they could use some over-the-counter software to provide the client with “some numbers” which the client accepts without review; contractor companies who have never operated the type of process the facility has, yet claims to be able to write operating procedures for all critical stages of the process; and lastly, hiring a 3rd party auditor that not only has never developed, implemented and managed a real-life PSM/RMP management system, they have ZERO experience with your specific type of process (e.g. chlorine water treatment, solvent distillation, refining, ammonia refrigeration, etc.).
Granted the PSM and RMP standards have some level of requirements for many of these tasks, such as:
1910.119(e)(4) The process hazard analysis shall be performed by a team with expertise in engineering and process operations, and the team shall include at least one employee who has experience and knowledge specific to the process being evaluated. Also, one member of the team must be knowledgeable in the specific process hazard analysis methodology being used.
1910.119(o)(2) The compliance audit shall be conducted by at least one person knowledgeable in the process.
The question for a facility is this…when you hire a contractor to perform these “services” for you, how do you ensure they have the skill(s) and qualification(s) to provide these services for your specific process? At this point in time, the crickets begin to chirp!
One thing that I am very proud of is that SAFTENG.net LLC will ONLY do work that we have the FIRST-HAND EXPERIENCE IN. For example, I personally do not do work in the Construction Industry. I do have a client in the construction industry, but my work for them was to put in place a safety management system so they could lower their OSHA rates and EMR so they could become an approved Dept. of Energy contractor. I do not do construction site audits or training on construction specific related safety practices. I have one team member who handles the construction side of the business and he does NOT do anything on the general industry side of our business because he spent his entire professional safety career in the construction industry. We do not have OSHA outreach trainers doing training in fields they have less than 12 years FIRST-HAND EXPERIENCE in. Sure I could go get certified to be a Construction Outreach trainer and start doing this training, but we believe clients and their workers deserve the very best and I am not the man for construction-related safety training as there are a ton of safety professionals MUCH BETTER SUITED for this work than I. SAFTENG.net LLC has a niche in Chemical Process Safety, but even then we have a narrow focus of processes and chemicals that we specialize in. Surprise-Surprise…it is the same processes and chemicals that I worked with while I was a safety and health manager in the chemical and semiconductor industries. We have no problem telling potential clients or existing clients “that is outside our expertise” and recommend a partner company. The client is SAFER and HAPPIER than I could have ever made them and 9 out of 10 times they appreciate the honesty and come back to offer SAFTENG.net LLC more business in areas that we excel in.
Bottom line, we need to QUALIFY ALL CONTRACTORS who have exposure to our chemical process safety management system. From the “wrench turners” to the “PHA Facilitator” and all the ones in-between, as they all play a MAJOR ROLE in process safety management. One final thought for you to ponder…If electricity is a CRITICAL UTILITY to your process and even though the electrical contractor crew will not be working in, on or adjacent to your covered process…is this electrical contractor one that needs to be evaluated? I say YES, but would be interested in hearing what you have to say.
Bryan