Bryan Haywood

Washington State Department of Labor & Industries (L&I) is proposing updated workplace safety rules for petroleum refineries

/ Chemical Process Safety (PSM/RMP) /

The Washington State Department of Labor & Industries (L&I) is proposing updated workplace safety rules for petroleum refineries designed to prevent catastrophic events like the 2010 explosion that killed seven workers at the former Tesoro refinery in Anacortes. The proposed update addresses what’s known as process safety management (PSM), which describes the way workplaces handle…...

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Safety Thought of the Week… To say that accidents are due to human failure is not so much untrue as unhelpful for three reasons

/ Motivational Safety Materials, Safety Management System, Safety Thought of the Week /

To say that accidents are due to human failure is not so much untrue as unhelpful for three reasons: Every accident is due to human error: someone, usually a manager, has to decide what to do; someone, usually a designer, has to decide how to do it; someone, usually an operator, has to do it…....

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Pizza manufacturer faces $2.8M in penalties after an investigation into 29-year-old sanitation worker’s death

/ Lockout Tagout /

A federal investigation has found that the operator of a specialty frozen pizza manufacturing plant in Illinois could have prevented the death of a 29-year-old sanitation worker by following proper machine safety procedures.  OSHA CSHOs learned the sanitation worker suffered fatal injuries while working on the overnight shift under the supervision of the Pizza Company…...

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OSHA LOTO citations after amputation of a fingertip while reassembling a pump ($298K)

/ Lockout Tagout /

A 29-year-old worker suffered the amputation of a fingertip while reassembling a pump, an injury the employer could have prevented by ensuring to shutdown and lockout the equipment to prevent it from unexpectedly starting during maintenance. OSHA investigated after the company reported the December 2022 injury and found the employer did not train workers on…...

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Concerns with the analysis of human factors in PHAs

/ Chemical Process Safety (PSM/RMP) /

This posting is a spin-off of information presented in the white paper from the UK’s Chartered Institute of Ergonomics and Human Factors. That paper focused on concerns with treating human factors in Bowtie’s analysis. I have modified their wording to make their valid points reflect all recognized PHA methodologies. The paper mentions eight (8) concerns…...

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DOJ’s and MPD’s LATENT ORGANIZATIONAL FAILURES led to the death of George Floyd

/ Safety Management System /

That would have been my headline as a safety professional with over 30 years of experience investigating serious accidents. I am always amazed at how society sees failures like organizations do. If the DOJ truly believes what they claim to have found in the 2-year investigation of the MPD, then why did they prosecute the…...

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Learnings from the pandemic

/ Safety Management System /

The pandemic is chocked full of LEARNING opportunities that we can translate into our effort to improve safety at our facilities. The one that screams at me the most is one of how our elected leaders (and I use that term loosely) behaved. I said back in the middle of the pandemic that we needed…...

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The catastrophic collapse of Champlain Towers South is a perfect storm of “Latent Organizational Failures”

/ Safety Management System /

The recent release of a report regarding the catastrophic collapse of Champlain Towers South is a “storybook” of how Latent Organizational failures set the stage for an accident.  And like all the bad accidents before this one, everyone from the government to the media is looking for someone or some people to blame (i.e., Active…...

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CSB and Wacker determined that the fatal HCL release was due to improper TORQUING on nozzle assemble

/ Chemical Process Safety (PSM/RMP) /

PTFE-lined piping, such as the equipment installed in the HCl regeneration unit, requires a retorquing of flange bolts to minimize leakage from bolt relaxation. The retorquing involves bringing the processing unit to operating temperature, allowing it to cool to ambient temperatures, and retorquing to the set value. As the original equipment manufacturer (OEM) describes: A…...

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Steam is a serious hazard, both in pressure and temperature

/ OSHA Compliance /

At 1:00 p.m. on December 16, 2022, an employee monitored the start-up and operations of a high-pressure Water Tube Generator Boiler in preparation for an anticipated winter storm. A threaded plug on the boiler wall failed during the boiler’s start-up as system pressure was building, allowing the release of high-temperature and high-pressure steam. The steam…...

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Another example of a worker on the incoming shift killing a co-worker on the out-going shift all because the lack of LOTO

/ Lockout Tagout /

This happens more often than most think: At 6:30 a.m. on December 7, 2022, an employee was removing wood bark from a de-barker machine at the CHANGE OF NIGHT SHIFT WHEN A DAY SHIFT COWORKER STARTED THE DE- BARKER. The employee was crushed and killed due to internal injuries. Had the worker performing the “cleaning”…...

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