It cannot be assumed that workers will naturally begin to report problems, errors, and near misses once a just environment is in place. There are a number of organizational as well as psychological barriers that must be hurdled before a reporting culture can be put in place.   The first barrier to overcome is … HomeRead More »

In older facilities, we see illumination for an exit sign coming from an external source.  Section 1013.6 of the IBC regulates the graphics, illumination, and emergency power supply for such signs. Although no particular color is specified for exit signs, it is REQUIRED that the color and design of the signs, the lettering, the arrows, and other symbols on the sign provide good contrast to increase...

Dr. Sidney Dekker (Ph.D. in Cognitive Systems Engineering) states there are basically two (2) ways of looking at human error. In this article, I share with you, the first view, which could be called “the bad apple theory“. It maintains that: … HomeRead More »

Three (3) ingredients are vital for driving the safety engine, all of them the province of top management or what the organizational theorist, Mintzberg, has termed the strategic apex of the system. These driving forces are: commitment, competence and cognizance Reason’s three C’s. … HomeRead More »

Take any of the following steps below that may be necessary to guard against stored energy(s) left in the equipment after it has been shut down and isolated from its energy source(s). … HomeRead More »

An older post, with updates…Ever since the 2005 BP Texas City tragedy, refineries and chemical plants have been working diligently to review “facility siting” risks for their facilities.  As with all of the PSM elements, many of us took this new focus as a learning opportunity.  We had all done something we called “facility siting” in our Process Hazards Analysis, but in the early 1990’s...

Key Principles in integrating Human Factors in Hazard Identification, Hazard Analysis, and Risk Assessments include: … HomeRead More »

As we have discussed here many times, our piping is our “primary containment” that seems to be where the vast majority of Loss of Primary Containment (LOPC) events occur. Many reasons for this, which we have spelled out in other postings, but none the less the vast majority of “leaks” occur in our piping. One means that we should be abiding by is “proper support”...

March 31, 2009 MEMORANDUM FOR:     REGIONAL ADMINISTRATORS THROUGH:        DONALD G. SHALHOUB DEPUTY ASSISTANT SECRETARY   FROM:                RICHARD E. FAIRFAX, DIRECTOR DIRECTORATE OF ENFORCEMENT PROGRAMS  SUBJECT:          Management of Organizational...

The strategic approach to improving human performance within safety embraces two (2) primary challenges: Anticipate, Prevent, Catch, and Recover from ACTIVE errors Identify and Eliminate LATENT organizational weaknesses that provoke human error and degrade controls against error and the consequences of error Preventable errors will not be eliminated if opportunities to err are not methodically identified....

EPA can improve its program management and oversight to better assure that facilities covered by the Clean Air Act’s Risk Management Program submit or re-submit an RMP. EPA had not established national procedures for identifying covered facilities that had not submitted RMPs. For the 5 States reviewed, we identified 48 facilities in 3 States that reported large amounts of covered chemicals stored...

This article is for ANYONE with anhydrous ammonia, regardless if you have 100 pounds or 100,000 pounds of ammonia and your primary means of containment is Carbon Steel. I have written numerous times about the Stress Corrosion Cracking (SCC) failure mode and shared numerous accidents and alerts regarding this failure mode. In this article, I want to point out a little PSM/RMP requirement that often...