Essential Practices for Creating, Strengthening, and Sustaining Process Safety Culture

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• Publisher: Wiley-AIChE
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781119010159
• eBook ISBN: 9781119515173
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Physical Sciences
• Subtopic: Industrial & Technical Chemistry

An essential guide that offers an understanding of and the practices needed to assess and strengthen process safety culture

Essential Practices for Developing, Strengthening and Implementing Process Safety Culture presents a much-needed guide for understanding an organization's working culture and contains information on why a good culture is essential for safe, cost-effective, and high-quality operations. The text defines process safety culture and offers information on a safety culture's history, organizational impact and benefits, and the role that leadership plays at all levels of an organization. In addition, the book outlines the core principles needed to assess and strengthen process safety culture such as: maintain a sense of vulnerability; combat normalization of deviance; establish an imperative for safety; perform valid, timely, hazard and risk assessments; ensure open and frank communications; learn and advance the culture.

This important guide also reviews leadership standards within the organizational structure, warning signs of cultural degradation and remedies, as well as the importance of using diverse methods over time to assess culture. This vital resource:

• Provides an overview for understanding an organization's working culture
• Offers guidance on why a good culture is essential for safe, cost-effective, and high quality operations
• Includes down-to-earth advice for recognizing, assessing, strengthening and sustaining a good process safety culture
• Contains illustrative examples and cases studies, and references to literature, codes, and standards

Written for corporate, business and line managers, engineers, and process safety professionals interested in excellent performance for their organization, Essential Practices for Developing, Strengthening and Implementing Process Safety Culture is the go-to reference for implementing and keeping in place a culture of safety.

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INTRODUCTION

1.1 IMPORTANCE OF PROCESS SAFETY CULTURE

The 2014 FIFA World Cup semifinal between Germany and Brazil featured two of the most technically proficient teams to contest a match. Within a half-hour, however, the difference between the two emerged, as Germany scored five goals on a shell-shocked Brazil on the way to a 7-1 rout.

The difference? Neymar da Silva Santos, the captain, leader, and culture-setter of the Brazilian side, had suffered a fractured vertebra in the previous match, and could not even cheer his teammates on from the sidelines. With their culture-leader absent, Brazil failed to execute their usually formidable game plan and suffered a catastrophic loss.

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PSMS = Process Safety Management System

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Similarly, process safety cannot succeed without culture leadership. Investigation of numerous incidents in major hazard operations has clearly revealed culture deficiencies. The data show that without a healthy process safety culture, even the most well-intentioned, well-designed process safety management system (PSMS) will be ineffective. For example, Union Carbide was known as a process safety technology leader in the early 1980s. However, weak culture at its Bhopal facility allowed many “Normalization of Deviance” failures leading to the December 3, 1984 tragedy. Simply stated, a strong, positive process safety culture enables the facility's PSMS to perform at its best. This gives the facility its best chance to prevent catastrophic fires, explosions, toxic releases, and major environmental damage.

Like all cultures, process safety culture starts with strong, committed, and consistent leadership. Just as commanding officers set the cultures of their troops, senior leaders of facilities and companies set the process safety culture of their organizations. Senior leaders set the underlying tone for how an organization functions and motivates the individuals within the organization to maximize the impact of their collective talent (Ref. 1.1).

Without leadership's direct, continuing, and strong participation in setting process safety culture, the culture will suffer gaps in one or more of the ten cultural principals (see chapter 2). This leadership should cascade through the organization, with each leader helping their subordinates, peers, and managers maintain focus on achieving the desired culture.

Leadership of culture should survive economic downturns and keep pace with upturns and technology changes. Culture leadership should persist through acquisitions and divestitures. Perhaps hardest of all, it should survive changes of personnel. Altogether, leadership should be committed to establishing and maintaining a sound process safety culture and should establish the proper philosophical tone for the culture. This tone should emphasize the true importance of process safety and the faithful execution of the PSMS. The importance of strong leadership will be further discussed in section 1.4 and in Chapter 3.

1.2 DEFINITION OF PROCESS SAFETY CULTURE

Many experts have defined culture as what people do when their boss is not around. A group of people with a common purpose (e.g., co-workers, teammates, and families) develops a set of beliefs, customs, and behaviors that become embedded in how the group thinks and works. With continued practice, these beliefs and behaviors become reinforced and integrated into the group's value system (12,13). As time goes on, the group's actions reflect common and deeply held values. The group expects newcomers to adopt or “buy into” these values to become accepted into the group.

Unfortunately, negative cultures can also exist, where common values result in attitudes and actions with negative consequences. In such cultures, peer pressure can reinforce negative behaviors. This may happen for example, if a new co- worker berated for following the approved procedure instead of the common but unsafe shortcut.

The International Nuclear Safety Advisory Group (INSAG) of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) made one of the first definitions of safety culture in the investigation of the aftermath of the Chernobyl accident in 1986 (Ref 1.4).

“Safety Culture is that assembly of characteristics and attitudes in organizations and individuals which establishes that, as an overriding priority, nuclear plant safety issues receive the attention warranted by their significance.”

The preceding definition describes the result of the culture, but not the culture itself (Ref 1.5). In the wake of the Challenger and Columbia disasters, NASA (16,17) began to recognize that key personnel defined organizational culture, and that change in personnel can lead to negative culture change:

“Organizational culture refers to the basic v...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Supplemental Material Available on The Web
• Acronyms and Abbreviations
• Glossary
• Acknowledgements
• Preface
• Nomenclature
• Executive Summary
• Chapter 1 Introduction
• Chapter 2 Process Safety Culture Core Principles
• Chapter 3 Leadership for Process Safety Culture Within the Organizational Structure
• Chapter 4 Applying the Core Principles of Process Safety Culture
• Chapter 5 Aligning Culture with PSMS Elements
• Chapter 6 Where Do You Start?
• Chapter 7 Sustaining Process Safety Culture
• Appendices
• End User License Agreement