One of my favorite parts of teaching the 1-day PSM Intro course at ASSE SeminarFest is the vast numbers of students and all of their learnings and experiences being shared. This year was even better than years before – in fact, we had so many side-bar discussions because of the great input from the students – that I ran out of time (also due to a 90-minute lunch break this year). The one topic that I was challenged on was the definition of “Loss of Primary Containment” (LOPC). I start the course by telling the students that there are four main takeaways I want them to leave with:
1) process safety is all about PREVENTING the event, PROTECTING assets when it does happen, and MITIGATING the consequences from the event
2) looking at risk in the traditional Occ Safety and Health scheme is flip upside down in process safety – in traditional Occ Safety and Health we are chasing high frequency- lower severity events (i.e. OSHA recordable injuries) – in process safety we worry about the low frequency-high severity events.
3) Everything we do in process safety is to prevent an LOPC event
4) RAGAGEP(s) is true process safety – not 1910.119 or Part 68
So we get into a discussion around LOPC and how is it defined. Here’s the “trick question”… do you consider an RV lifting or an RD bursting as an LOPC event?