One of the most prominent mistakes organizations make when implementing their Behavior-Based Safety Process (BBSP) is that they still operate under 1990s-era assumptions regarding how they view and manage incident reporting and investigation and the behaviors of personnel involved in those undesired events. An improperly implemented and managed BBSP can create numerous biases, with the […]
Auditing! Whether it’s internal (1st party), 2nd party, or 3rd Party, auditing at a CONSISTENT FREQUENCY is a true sign that management is committed to safety. If the management team asks… “Does OSHA require this audit?”
Part 1: Is the act shown in the video an: Error? Mistake? Or Violation? Keep in mind that we all make errors, mistakes, and commit violations. Part 2: Which class of error, mistake, or violation? Tips to help:
At an Ethylene unit in the Czech Republic (2015), when swapping over cooling water supply lines during a flowmeter calibration, the operator made a simple mistake. While intending to open valve #3 on the spare supply line, he closed the identical valve #2 instead, shutting off all cooling water to the Light Ends columns. A
This footage would be great to use in a management setting to discuss failures in our safety process. My plant managers (all four of them) would immediately make the snarky comment about not having a “bullseye” painted on the bucket. It was simply a matter of time!!! I/m betting this “practice” was “routine” (Reason’s HF
What would you require for this bypass around a safety critical valve? Temporary SOP, Car Seals or BOTH? The automated valve is the Emergency Shutoff Valve tied to a Hi-Hi Interlock on an above-ground atmospheric flammable liquid storage tank. The LOPC/Over-Fill event occurred because the worker filling the tank was “shorthanded” that day and had
Has it been validated? Just because the PLC/Computer says it, we still have to trust it.
If the company leadership team, including the Board of Directors (BOD), cannot explicitly state what they want from the EHS team and what level of performance they wish to achieve, then we are being set up to fail. I am amazed at how a leadership team will claim a multi-million-dollar project was a “safety project”
Recently, I visited an old client after a long absence. As I pulled into the parking lot, I immediately noticed the upgrade to the freshly paved and striped parking lot. My last visit, years earlier, I ended up parking in a crater in a gravel lot that some smaller cars would not have been able
A long-time friend (Bill Conlon, President at Pintail Power) and a remarkable engineer (not officially an SE- LOL) shared with me his first published article, from April 1975, in which he argued against relying on Administrative Controls and instead advocated for safety through design as the way to manage risks. Now, for a man who
The PSM standard requires the employer’s PHA team to evaluate human factors during its process hazard analysis. CCPS defines human factors as “a common term given to the widely-recognized discipline of addressing interactions in the work environment between people, a facility, and its management systems.” The basic principle of assessing human factors is to determine
I’ll never understand this new way of doing math!! But it’s all the rage. 😉
