The Lifecycle of a Process Safety Recommendation

One of the most difficult aspects of process safety is to manage process safety study recommendations throughout the lifecycle of a facility.  The management of this implemented knowledge is more and more difficult today especially with the high turnover of facility and project staff during the full lifecycle of a facility; memory of the recommendations is kept by the participating staff and once personnel move on to another organization the intent for the suggested or executed action is lost unless fully documented and maintained.  With the added complexity and automation of most facilities these days, some of these recommendations are deemed as safety critical in the operations of a facility and thus require more scrutiny in the continuous management of the action  through the lifecycle of the facility.  The intent of this paper is to review the lifecycle of a process safety recommendation and explore the use of quality Lean thinking (the flow of the process) to find means of ensuring the effective management of the action through the life of the facility.  It is the intent of the authors to utilize their lessons learned from working on Brownfield and Greenfield process safety studies, which will not only highlight the pitfalls that could be encountered but also the solutions to ensure that the safety critical issues are continually and cost effectively addressed or monitored through the life of the facility.