Guide for Making Acute Risk Decisions

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• Publisher: Wiley-AIChE
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781119669081
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Technology & Engineering
• Subtopic: Industrial Health & Safety
• Index: Technology & Engineering

This book presents a guidance on a large range of decision aids for risk analysts and decision makers in industry so that vital decisions can be made in a more consistent, logical, and rigorous manner. It provide good industry practices on how risk decision making is conducted in the chemical industry from many risk information sources as well as all the elements that need to be addressed to ensure good decisions are being made.

Topics Include: Identifying Risk Decisions, A Risk Decision Strategy for Process Safety, Case Studies in Risk Decision Making Failures, Guidance on Selecting Decision Aids, Templates for Decision Making in Risk-Based Process Safety, Understanding Process Hazards & Worst Possible Consequences, Management of Change as an Exercise in Risk Identification, Inherently Safer Design as an Exercise in Risk Tradeoff Analysis, Using LOPA and Risk Matrices in Risk Decisions, Using CPQRA and Safety Risk Criteria in Risk Decisions, Group Decision Making, Avoiding Decision Traps, Documentation of Process Safety Risk Decisions

1
INTRODUCTION

1.1 HISTORY OF APPROACHES TO PROCESS SAFETY MANAGEMENT

By the 1980’s, incidents such as the Flixborough (UK) Nypro Plant explosion in 1974, the Seveso (Italy) dioxin release in 1976, the Piper Alpha oil platform explosion in 1976, the Mexico City (Mexico) LPG BLEVE explosion event, and the Bhopal (India) methylisocyanate release (both in in 1984) led to the development and promulgation of regulations concerning process safety throughout the world. A few examples are the:

• European Union Seveso Directives, (Seveso I, 1976, Seveso II, 1997 and Seveso III, 2012)
• U.S. OSHA Process Safety Management (PSM) rule, 1992
• U.K. Offshore Installations (Safety Case) Regulations 1992
• U.S. EPA Risk Management Plan (RMP) rule, 1997
• Mexican Integral Security and Environmental Management System (SISPA), 1998
• U.K Control of Major Accident Hazards (COMAH) regulation, 1999 (COMAH is the UK implementation of the Seveso directives)
• Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1999
• Decree 591 (China): Regulations on Safe Management of Hazardous Chemicals, 2011

One problem with some of the regulations is that they are frequently limited in scope. For example, OSHA's PSM and the COMAH regulation have lists of covered chemicals with threshold quantities. Companies can choose to not apply any of the regulatory management system elements to non-covered chemical processes. The OSHA PSM rule exempts atmospheric storage tanks, yet such tanks have been involved in very serious incidents. Examples include the explosions in Buncefield, U.K. in 2005, and CAPECO (Caribbean Petroleum Company) in Puerto Rico in 2009, both due to overflow of atmospheric storage tanks.

In response to these regulations and public pressure, third party organizations also developed process safety guidance. In the U.S., American Petroleum Institute (API) published Management of Process Hazards in 1990 (API 750). The Center for Chemical Process Safety (CCPS) was established in 1985 in response to the Bhopal incident. The CCPS published Guidelines for Implementing Process Safety Management Systems (CCPS 1994) which had 15 process safety management system elements, and Guidelines for Risk Based Process Safety (CCPS 2007) which expanded this to twenty process safety management system elements. In Canada, the Canadian Chemical Producers Association (now the Chemical Industry Association of Canada, CIAC) developed Responsible Care® codes with its own management system elements (Topalovic and Krantzberg, 2014). The CIAC updated these codes in 2010.

A by no means inclusive list of other third-party organizations that have developed codes or support for process safety include:

• The International Association of Oil and Gas Producers (https://www.iogp.org/oil-and-gas-safety/process-safety/)
• The American Petroleum Institute (www.api.org) (https://www.api.org/news-policy-and-issues/safety-and-system-integrity)
• The Energy Institute (https://publishing.energyinst.org/topics/process-safety)
• Society of Organic Chemical Manufacturers Association http://www.socma.com/ChemStewards

CCPS now has over 200 member companies in countries on every continent (excluding Antarctica). The Responsible Care® codes were adopted not only by the U.S. Chemical Manufacturers Association (now the American Chemical Council (ACC)), but also in over 50 other countries. The various elements in these codes were based on industry experience and represented what process safety experts thought were the key elements of process safety management (PSM) at the time. With the worldwide reach of CCPS and Responsible Care®, these are truly internationally recognized.

1.2 THE PARADIGM OF RISK-BASED PROCESS SAFETY MANAGEMENT

1.2.1 Risk Based Process Safety (RBPS) Management

Although the rules and regulations mentioned above are credited with improving process safety, many companies were “challenged with inadequate management system performance, resource pressures, and stagnant process safety results.” (CCPS 2005, p ii).

Companies tended to adopt either standards based, regulations based, continuous improvement based, or some combination of these programs as their management system model. The shortcomings with these approaches are:

• Standards and regulations do not cover every situation
• Standards and regulations may represent the minimum that needs to be done to control risk
• Continuous improvement needs. If a company only looks at “lagging indicators”, i.e., actual incidents in which people have been hurt or killed, this could be insufficient, as they are (hopefully) rare.

Adopting an approach that looks at “leading indicators” can enable continuous improvement. The reader should see the CCPS document, Process Safety Leading and Lagging Metrics, You Don't Improve What You Don't Measure, 2nd Ed., AIChE Industry Technology Alliance, Jan 2011, for guidance.

(https://www.aiche.org/ccps/resources/tools/process-safety-metrics/references/Guidance-Documents)

In the early 2000’s CCPS developed and published Guidelines for Risk Based Process Safety (RBPS) (CCPS 2007) to move to the next level of process safety management. Until then, the codes and regulations were hazards based, i.e., defined covered processes (usually by threshold levels of covered chemicals) and then had performance-based requirements for controlling the hazards. A risk-based approach to PSM recognizes that not...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• ACRONYMS AND ABBREVIATIONS
• GLOSSARY
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• PREFACE
• 1 INTRODUCTION
• 2 KEY CONCEPTS IN RISK MANAGEMENT
• 3 UNDERSTANDING PROCESS HAZARDS, CONSEQUENCES AND RISKS
• 4 RISK DECISIONS AND STRATEGIES
• 5 DECISION MAKING
• 6 POTENTIAL DECISION TRAPS
• 7 INHERENTLY SAFER DESIGN
• 8 MANAGEMENT OF CHANGE
• 9 USING LOPA AND RISK MATRICES IN RISK DECISIONS
• 10 USING QRA AND SAFETY RISK CRITERIA IN RISK DECISIONS
• 11 DECISION IMPLEMENTATION
• 12 SUMMARY AND LESSONS
• REFERENCES
• INDEX
• WILEY END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT