Analytics to Reveal Meaurable Factors to Process Safety Performance

Analytics on a Large Industry Data Set Reveal the Leadership and Organizational Factors that Drive Down Risk and Reduce Incidents

With access to a multi-year data set of over a million incidents from 1000's of operating facilities worldwide in the Energy and Chemicals industry, the research team mined the data set to explore the differences in risk management practices and behaviors which most effectively explain the variation in process safety outcome performance. By modeling and examining predictive relationships, the study identifies four attributes - worker engagement, process discipline, risk sensitivity, and learning-mindedness – as critical for reducing incidents. 

Findings from this study support a progressive and integrated approach and suggest that companies that are proficient in driving process safety performance are companies that, to a greater degree, have successfully engaged their workforce, strengthened their operating discipline, sharpened their risk sensitivity, and become learning-minded. A learning-minded organization manages each incident and responds to each failure deliberately to identify and fully leverage improvement and learning opportunities.

While this study provides statistical evidence to support the strong correlation between leadership, organizational behavior attributes and safety performance, it also emphasizes the organizational factors that are necessary to enable and sustain effective risk mitigation efforts.  By deriving these insights from a data set of routine field-level activities, operational measurements may be created to measure progress and drive focus on engagement, discipline, risks, and learning.

This paper will conclude by sharing examples of how companies have applied these findings to establish quarterly and monthly measurements to drive leadership and organizational focus in these critical areas and ultimately to improve outcome performance.