“People give us credit only for what we ourselves believe.” — Karl Gutzkow Several years ago, in a paper and presentation to the Global Congress on Process Safety (GCPS), PSM experts from OSHA observed that while it is common to see a mechanical integrity (MI) program listed as a safeguard in a PHA, this is [...]
“Some safety professionals, in the name of ‘zero-injuries’, will heap regulation after regulation on a job until the organization rebels and simply refuses to comply.” — Phil La Duke There was a time when getting ready for winter meant making sure you had enough firewood to heat your cabin until spring. If you didn’t, your [...]
“Panic is a natural response to danger, but it’s one that severely compounds the risk.” — David Ignatius At 2:30 am, on Saturday, October 2, 2021, a split in the San Pedro Bay Pipeline began discharging oil into the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California. Low pressure alarms in the control room indicated that there [...]
“We know we need civilization and laws and procedures, but isn’t it frustrating? Wouldn’t it be great if we could just do what we needed to do?” — Lee Child When someone thinks about a Process Hazard Analysis, a PHA, they usually think about a Hazard and Operability Review, a HazOp. And when they think [...]
“Our very lives depend on the ethics of strangers, and most of us are always strangers to other people.” — Bill Moyers One definition of ethics is “the moral principles that govern a person’s behavior.” Which means that engineering ethics would be “the moral principles that govern a person’s behavior while performing engineering.” Most of [...]
“I have always fancied that the end of the world will be when some enormous boiler, heated to three thousand millions of atmospheric pressure, shall explode and blow up the globe… They [the Americans] are great boiler makers.” — Jules Verne I was recently asked about using hot oil instead of steam to heat process [...]
“I’m not offended by all the dumb blonde jokes because I know I’m not dumb…and I also know that I’m not blonde.” — Dolly Parton See someone in glasses? They’re smart, right? See someone, especially a woman, with blonde hair? They’re dumb, right? Blonde and wears glasses? Now there’s a conundrum. These are ridiculous assumptions, [...]
“When I was young, I would sit in the bath and ideas would come to me. But I’m not young anymore, so now I just sit in the bath.” — Aki Kaurismaki “We’re installing a safety instrumented system in our existing process. Do we have to pull out all the existing instruments and replace them [...]
“Morning comes whether you set the alarm or not.” — Ursula K. Le Guin Late one evening a few months after we moved into our offices on Cherokee Street, the alarm went off. My home is nearby, and I got there within a couple of minutes to discover that one of the doors had been [...]
“Don’t rely too much on labels, for too often they are fables.” — Charles Spurgeon Trick question: “What does PSM require for storage tank labeling?” Trick answer: “Nothing.” Helpful answer: “OSHA doesn’t require storage tank labeling under the Process Safety Management (PSM) standard, 29 CFR 1910.119. It does, however, have requirements for storage tank labeling [...]
