Chemical Process Safety (PSM/RMP)

In the chemical industry, we had things a bit easier when it came to defining our process battery limits and this made it easy for us to define who was a PSM/RMP contractor.  But things are not so easy in facilities where the PSM process is a small and not core to the business.  We…...

The following factors are critical to any SMS’s sucess. The SMS:• must be comprehensive and integrated with respect to the adopted control measures• must be implemented in practice and used as the primary means of ensuring safe operation• should be consistent with the understanding of risk gained from the Safety Assessment• should have sufficient focus…...

My line of work brings me into contact with a lot of hazardous locations.  Some weeks I feel I should just sleep in my FR coveralls!  But each month we find errors in hazardous location classifications that could have disastrous results.  This article is an attempt to bring to light some of the common errors…...

A large metropolitan zoo maintenance employee may have disabled a warning light on a small train that derailed in 2009, sending 22 people to the hospital.  The records are part of the evidence to be used in a February 2012 trial in which plaintiffs claim the zoo was negligent in its maintenance and operation of…...

Just mention the letters “MOC” to an engineer or manager at a PSM/RMP facility and watch the eyes roll, the sighs let out, the clearing of throats, and so on.  MOC is probably in the top three of the most despised elements of PSM/RMP; and yet, to no safety professionals surprise, failure of doing an…...

This week EPA announced a MAJOR RMP settlement agreement with one of the nation’s largest Ammonia distributors.  This settlement agreement is HUGE in that it requires the company to install fixed Ammonia detectors at 14 different facilities in 12 states and over 2 EPA regions.  These detectors are direct wired to the local FD, and…...

Learnings from this incident can be applied to any toxic/posiounous compressed gases.  One fundamental rule…NEVER trap a liquid that has a high vapor pressure/low boiling point in a pipe or hose! To see the full size video, click on the “Read More” link below.  … Membership Required You must be a member to access this...

The CFATS Personnel Surety Program will provide high-risk chemical facilities with the mechanism to implement security measures to ensure that certain individuals are subject to screening for ties to terrorism. The program is necessary since conducting terrorist ties checks is an inherently governmental function because the federal governments Terrorist Screening Database (TSDB) is not publicly…...

These days it is becoming common practice to utilize truck driver(s) of our hazardous material(s) deliveries to do more than just deliver the material.  The line of thought in doing this, is that the drivers must be “qualified” or they would not be allowed to transport the hazardous materials.  Well, they may be qualified to…...

Almost weekly I see and hear the RMP “General Duty Clause” (GDC) being misquoted and improperly applied.  In this article I hope to clarify many of the myths and misconceptions of what EPA actually requires in the application of their GDC’s to RMP chemicals.  First and foremost, there is NO GET OUT OF JAIL FREE…...

UPDATED 6/15/11 – A lot of claims are being made by many training organizations that they can solve ALL your PSM/RMP training needs.  Now let me set the record straight, I think a lot of these off-site training courses are a GREAT first pass for operators and maintenance to get the baseline understanding of the…...