“If everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of itself.” Henry Ford Your company has had an incident or a near miss, the investigation is closed and the cause has been determined. Now what? In an ideal world, the goal is a return to normal operations with a lower likelihood that the incident [...]
“Red Shirt: In Star Trek, red-uniformed security officers and engineers who accompany the main characters on landing parties who often suffer quick deaths.[” Wikipedia I didn’t see the NBC television series, Star Trek, until it went into syndication, when it became a staple of television viewing for everyone I knew while I was in college. [...]
“We cannot solve our problems with the same level of thinking that created them.” Albert Einstein In Incident Investigations: A Guide for Employers, OSHA defines an incident as “a work-related event in which an injury or ill-health (regardless of severity) or fatality occurred, or could have occurred.” Incidents vary from large scale, such as the [...]
Every part of an organization is dependent on documented procedures to mitigate risk and improve productivity and performance. – Deborah Kenny At Bluefield Process Safety, I have had a chance to work on Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for multiple organizations. I have worked with some organizations that either lack SOPs for some or most tasks, [...]
“At the end of the day, the goals are simple: safety and security.” Jodi Rell At Bluefield Process Safety, our mission is to make the world a safer place. One of the resources we utilize to help us achieve our mission is the recommendations and safety videos released by the U.S. Chemical Safety Board (CSB). [...]
“Stopping enabling isn’t easy. Nor is it for the faint of heart. Aside from likely pushback and possible retaliation, you may also fear the consequences of doing nothing.” – Darlene Lancer, JD, MFT, expert on codependency I hate to see an operating company fined for safety violations. First, it means that they were out of [...]
“There are things known and there are things unknown, and in between are the doors of perception.” Aldous Huxley We’ve all seen them; factories are scattered across the landscapes of America. There’s probably one in or near the town where you live, where you work, where you raise your children. I live near one and [...]
“Safety is not a gadget but a state of mind.” Eleanor Everet Over-pressure scenarios can be defined as a situation resulting from the internal pressure within piping or vessels exceeding the maximum allowable working pressure (MAWP). The term “over-pressure” can make those in the process industry cringe. This revulsion is born from associating the term [...]
“Without a solid foundation, you’ll have trouble creating anything of value.” Erika Oppenheimer Recently, I’ve been asked by quite a few clients to walk them through the steps of the safety lifecycle to ensure they aren’t missing anything in their safety program. Trying to go through each step and explain its purpose over the phone, [...]
“Safety is a common denominator across all aspects of life, hence knowledge should always be shared. It is not a matter for industry it is a matter for humanity.” Doug Bourne, technical director at PM Lucas Six months ago, if you would have asked me to define the phrase “tolerable risk”, I would have stared [...]
