Process Safety Beyond the Fence Line

“I’m an actor… I do a job and I go home. Why are you interested in me? You don’t ask a truck driver about his job.”  — James Gandolfini I’ve been struck recently by how much we don’t talk about process safety once the hazardous chemicals we make have been loaded and shipped. Process Hazard [...]

By |2021-02-18T17:00:43-06:00February 18th, 2021|Chemicals, PHA, Process Safety, Process Safety Management|Comments Off on Process Safety Beyond the Fence Line

Operator Errors: Are They Really Design Errors?

“To err is human, to forgive, divine.”  — Alexander Pope I was in a PHA once where the lone operator on the PHA team finally grew weary of the discussion of operator error.  “Why is it that when you engineers make a mistake, you call it design error, but when I make a mistake, you [...]

Frozen Pipes? Cold is Not the Cause

“It’s not the fall that kills you; it’s the sudden stop at the end.”  — Douglas Adams It is October and cold weather is bearing down on us.  Some places have already experienced freezing temperatures, and for most of the rest of the northern hemisphere, it is coming soon. Which means that it is time [...]

By |2020-10-01T18:20:23-05:00October 1st, 2020|Current Events, PHA, Procedures, Process Safety|1 Comment

PHAs and LOPAs: What Would You Recommend?

“I don’t have a particular recommendation other than that we base decisions on as much hard data as possible.”  — Dorothy E. Denning The best waiters are the ones who are willing to make recommendations when you ask.  Anything but, “Well, everything is good.” Because, admit it, everything is not. And then, when you try [...]

By |2020-09-17T13:49:36-05:00September 17th, 2020|PHA, Process Safety Management, Recommendations|Comments Off on PHAs and LOPAs: What Would You Recommend?

Previous Incidents: Learning from Mistakes

“The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing.”  — Henry Ford I know a young woman whose relationships are in a constant state of turmoil. She keeps picking the wrong guys and each relationship ends in heartbreak. “Why do I keep making the same mistake over and over?” Why indeed? I [...]

By |2020-07-30T17:36:15-05:00July 30th, 2020|Chemicals, PHA, Process Safety, Process Safety Management|Comments Off on Previous Incidents: Learning from Mistakes

3 Criteria for Picking LOPA Scenarios

“The easiest way to solve a problem is to pick an easy one.”  — Franklin P. Jones We love having choices. We hate making choices. What if we pick wrong? There is no shortage of people ready to tell us. It is always helpful to have criteria for choosing, or to be honest, to justify [...]

By |2020-01-16T14:45:24-06:00January 16th, 2020|PHA, Process Safety Management, Risk Assessment, Safety Lifecycle|Comments Off on 3 Criteria for Picking LOPA Scenarios

Breaking Up Is Hard to Do: HazOp Nodes

“Come on, baby, let’s start anew, ‘cause breaking up is hard to do.”  — Neil Sedaka Before a HazOp team ever assembles, the facilitator has some important tasks to complete: get agreement with management on the scope of the review, identify the boundaries of the study, and break the process up into nodes.  And breaking [...]

By |2020-01-09T16:34:36-06:00January 9th, 2020|PHA, Procedures, Process Safety Management|3 Comments

We’re Not Wizards

“But how they can be charged with negligence because they were not wizards, appellant’s brief does not make clear.”  — Osmond K. Fraenkel, successfully arguing before the New York Supreme Court, 1935 In a world where companies tout “Zero Incidents,” not as an aspirational definition of perfect safety, but as a measurable and achievable target, [...]

By |2019-10-17T18:14:52-05:00October 17th, 2019|PHA, Process Safety Management, Risk Assessment, Safety Lifecycle|Comments Off on We’re Not Wizards

More Than Three? Limits to Redundancy

“How can you trust a man who wears both a belt and suspenders? The man can’t even trust his own pants.”  — Henry Fonda as Frank, in Once Upon a Time in the West There’s a cliché in the movies that involves a paranoid urban apartment-dweller with a dozen or more locks, deadbolts, chains, and [...]

By |2019-09-12T14:30:56-05:00September 12th, 2019|PHA, Process Safety, Process Safety Management, Workplace Safety|Comments Off on More Than Three? Limits to Redundancy

Seven Questions: The Essence of HazOps

“A prudent question is one-half of wisdom.”  — Francis Bacon There are about a gazillion “best” ways to do HazOps. What they all have in common, however, is that they use worksheets that are set up as tables that look at deviations in a node. For each deviation, a HazOp team considers “Causes”, “Consequences”, “Safeguards”, [...]

By |2019-08-29T14:38:07-05:00August 29th, 2019|PHA, Process Safety, Process Safety Management|Comments Off on Seven Questions: The Essence of HazOps
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