“The pendulum of the mind alternates between sense and nonsense, not between right and wrong.” — Carl Jung I’ve been taught, and have taught others, that you can’t take credit for a fire suppression system in a Layer of Protection Analysis (LOPA). Why not? Because a fire suppression system doesn’t kick in until a fire [...]
“We cannot do everything at once, but we can do something at once.” — Calvin Coolidge I love a good play on words. “At once” can mean either “simultaneously” or it can mean “immediately”, and Calvin Coolidge managed to pack both meanings into a single sentence. “We cannot do everything simultaneously, but we can do [...]
“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” — Leo Tolstoy, in Anna Karenina I once worked with a facility that discharged process equipment cleaning water to the city sewer. They had a tough time staying below the discharge limits for copper. In turned out that the city water [...]
“Quantity and persistence will get you the outcomes you need.” — James Altucher One of the challenges of process hazard analysis is risk assessment. To determine whether additional risk reduction is required, the team must quantify the risk and compare it to risk tolerance criteria. For the risk tolerance criteria to be useful to the [...]
“The ancient Greeks and Romans also held the view that acceptance is the beginning of wisdom.” — Simon Van Booy PHA teams often face the question of whether to address tank truck loading and unloading. On the one hand, trucks in transit are under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT), not the [...]
“Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection, we can catch excellence.” — Vince Lombardi I don’t believe that I have ever facilitated a perfect PHA. The question is, how would I recognize it if it was perfect? And would others agree? What exactly is a perfect PHA? A PHA Identifies Hazards The primary [...]
“If you can’t take the heat, get out of the kitchen.” — Harry S. Truman For decades, I’ve told people that OSHA requires thermal protection on surfaces over 140°F (60 C) up to a height of 7 feet. People just accepted that because a) I was the expert and b) it made sense. Recently, though, [...]
“How often misused words generate misleading thoughts.” ‑ Herbert Spencer I once worked for an organization where senior managers freely expressed their differences of opinion. Often, they would dismiss a colleague’s position, saying, “That’s just semantics.” It became easy for me to conclude that semantics, the meaning of words and statements, were trivial. I know better [...]
“Time keeps on slipping, slipping, slipping, into the future.” — Steve Miller The Process Safety Management (PSM) standard, 29 CFR 1910.119, states in (e)(6) that “At least every five (5) years after the completion of the initial process hazard analysis, the process hazard analysis shall be updated and revalidated by a team meeting the requirements [...]
“The hardest thing is writing a recommendation for someone we know.” — Kin Hubbard We’ve all heard, over and over, that data without analysis is useless. Well, analysis without recommendations is just as useless. Unfortunately, many young engineers are incredible analysts but then mistakenly believe that their analysis will stand on its own, that the [...]
