How Is Your Process Safety Vision? - Try Pursuing “Perfect Process Safety”

Many companies have learned that only pursuing regulatory compliance is not enough to manage risks.  Economic cycles, organizational changes, and aging assets and people all put great stress on companies and degrade their ability to improve and sustain safety performance.  In occupational safety and HSE, some companies have adopted one form or another of "driving bad frequencies to zero" in order to keep their organizations focused on driving safety performance improvement.  In process safety, why can't we do the equivalent - let's go after "Perfect Process Safety."  This paper will describe a practical framework for pursuing perfect process safety:

•  A culture based on proper ownership of process safety empowered by visionary leadership
• Risk-informed sensitivity that guides everything
• Effective, fit-for-purpose management systems
• PS practices embraced and followed with good operational discipline at ALL levels
• Learning from ALL sources – internal, external and outside industry group
• Well-formed/visible performance pyramid; metrics at every level that drive intended behaviors
• Goals and actual performance that improves

Effective process safety leadership throughout organizational levels and learning via management of a company's wisdom life cycle are two vital components of this pursuit strategy.  This paper will define ways of measuring process safety leadership based on 15 key attributes of effective leaders and how to identify learning-disabled organizations.