Each time the site director has been confronted with a contradiction between safety and production, he has chosen to favor safety, or on the contrary, he has accepted to “adapt” safety rules to achieve a production target. Each time an operator reaches a production target but has taken a risk to do so, the management […]
As I wrote last week, I am not a fan of the so-called “safety stand-downs” that seem to be all the rage these days. Our stand-downs in the 1990s and 2000s were entirely different approaches and were conducted following serious events. My post spurred a lot of great discussions about how they are conducted vs.
I am sharing this report to highlight the weaknesses in the ability of the states to comply with the new emergency response exercise requirements in the RMP rule (40 CFR Part 68.96 Emergency response exercises). In October 2021, the Office of Emergency Management1 (OEM) of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency conducted a survey of the
As the debate in OSH regarding metrics and lagging indicators rages on, there is one aspect to their use that far too many overlook. If your organization is setting goals using lagging indicators, it should at least be using them correctly. This means that BOTH FREQUENCY and SEVERITY need to be measured. I am sure
That PSV is from a Vinyl Chloride car… so can you see why I am confused by what I see in this NTSB PR pic? Can you name at least two things that make you go Hmmm? Source: https://www.ntsb.gov/news/press-releases/Pages/NR20230321.aspx
This week I had an enlighting discussion with another senior management group that was just way off base in their understanding of OSHA’s use of injury and illness rates. This company is in an industry that is certainly on OSHA’s radar, and their desire to improve safety is simply to reduce their injury and illness
With the latest news of the Appeals Court case that could cause 50 years of OSHA standards to be unwound, the UK’s HSE weekly newsletter reminds us of how safety should be managed. OSHA’s old compliance model has run its course. I am NOT advocating we do away with OSHA standards, as I believe they
Intermediate Bulk Containers (IBC) have become very popular in various industries. They have also become a major pain in the _ss for many safety and process safety professionals as they have become a “catch-all” type of container. This week, we encountered an IBC permanently implemented as a “process vessel” within a PSM/RMP-covered process. And as
At 1:00 a.m. on October 23, 2022, an employee climbed into a barley germination tank at a malt manufacturing facility. The turning auger arm inside of the tank was not working so the employee climbed into the tank using a portable ladder. The employee intended to shovel some wet germinating grain away from the vertical
At 7:27 a.m. on September 19, 2022, an employee was performing welding repairs in a mechanical kettle when the kettle was turned on. The employee suffered crushing injuries when caught between the kettle paddles and the sweeper which were rotating in opposite directions. The employee died due to his injuries.
Issue HSE has identified high concentrations of hydrogen sulfide (H2S) in ullage spaces of cargo and slop tanks onboard some FPSOs and FSUs operating in UKCS. The high concentrations (up to 16,000ppm) is above the upper measuring limits of the standard portable gas monitoring equipment generally used onboard tankers and FPSOs, and may be undetected.
I can remember “surviving” through safety stand-downs in my career and I can assure you, they were not coffee and donut parties! The stand-downs back then were TRUE stand-downs where the company halted the tasks/operations that were involved in the accident until the investigation was complete, the root cause analysis was complete, AND the corrective
