“Here we go again. Fighting for resources. What the hell am I doing here?” — Brad Pitt as Roy McBride in Ad Astra I just received an email from a client. They were alarmed that the proposed Federal budget included, again, defunding the Chemical Safety Board, and wanted to know what they could do to [...]
“You’re a hero one day, you’re a villain another day.” — Vincent Tan Every good story is a story of conflict. It has a villain. It has a victim. And in the best stories, it has a hero. The story of a process incident or scenario is no different. It has villains—causes. It has victims—receptors, [...]
“All I know is what I read in the papers.” — Will Rogers When there is a catastrophic release of highly hazardous chemicals, I want to know about it. I want to know what happened, why it happened, and what I can learn to keep it from happening again. I go to news accounts. All [...]
“A bad system will beat a good person every time.” -W.E. Deming According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, over 40 million American workers quit their jobs in 2018. That’s almost 27% of the workforce. Furthermore, a 2019 survey revealed that 75% of employees in the U.S. do not stay at their jobs for more [...]
“The more things change, the more they remain the same.” — Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr When I was a young engineer living in a small town in central Massachusetts, I would walk into the town center to pick up groceries and go to the post office. On the way, there was a body shop. I got [...]
“We must accept human error as inevitable - and design around that fact.” — Donald Berwick The idea of human error and its contribution to industrial incidents has been the center of debate in recent years. If you’ve been part of more than one incident investigation, you’ve probably experienced an incident being attributed to human [...]
“While devastated at this unimaginable loss, we are so very proud that Ryan died while trying to protect his fellow employees and restaurant patrons.” — family of Ryan Baldera On November 7, 2019, a restaurant employee in Burlington, Massachusetts was overcome by fumes from a “strong chemical cleaning agent” and died. Thirteen others were taken [...]
“Fear is often our immediate response to uncertainty.” — Gabrielle Bernstein In 2001, when the CCPS book, Layer of Protection Analysis: Simplified Process Risk Assessment, “the purple book”, stated that human response is “a relatively weak protection layer” and “less reliable than engineering controls”, many people were willing to accept that piece of conventional wisdom. [...]
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” — George Santayana Our offices on Cherokee Street exist in the midst of a vibrant Hispanic community. So here in our neighborhood, Dia de los Muertos is in getting in full swing and will be observed through November 2. Dia de los Muertos, the [...]
“For Fools rush in where Angels fear to tread.” — Alexander Pope I once led some process safety training that involved people from several different plants from around the world. After almost a week together, the people in the training became pretty comfortable with one another. One of the last topics of the training was [...]
