This is the third post of a series of blog posts on process safety management. Here are the links to the other two : first post , second post .
In this post, we address the three ways in which Incident Management Systems (IMS) support performance improvement s of Process Safety .
Performance visibility
Back in 2010, t he publication of the first edition of the American Petroleum Institute (API) Recommended Practice on Process Safety Indicators (API RP-754) provided definitions of recommended key lagging and leading process safety indicators. The definitions set by RP-754 have been adopted by other organisations such as the International Oil & Gas Producers (IOGP), International Council of Chemical Associations (ICCA) and European Chemical Industry Council (CEFIC) to create globally harmonized indicators.
When it comes to lagging indicators, the variety of consequences of process safety events is taken into consideration, in four impact areas:
- Human health and safety consequences
- Damage cost
- Community impact
- Chemical hazardousness and quantity
This creates too much complexity for most incident management systems to handle , so companies rely on parallel processes involving a mix of subject matter expert owned spreadsheets or parallel business intelligence reporting systems.
The results of parallel systems are increased cost, no single source of truth , and lack of transparency and visibility across organisations on process safety performance. Good visibility on process safety performance is fundamental for assessing the health of barriers.
Enablon’s best-in-class Incident Management Software provides immediate and transparent process safety event classification based on the facts of the recorded incident, removing ambiguity and providing consistently accurate classification.
Incident investigation and root cause analysis
When incidents and near misses occur, it is crucial for organisations to have a good process for understanding what barriers failed that led to these events occurring. Good incident management systems can direct workflow and investigation methodologies based on the level of severity, driving systematic and quality identification of causal factors.
There is a wide range of root cause and investigation methodologies available . G ood systems can capture these effectively . A nd by being able to collate the results from multiple methodologies , they offer en terprises the best of both worlds .
E xpert analysis integrated within a corporate incident management system provide s insights, eliminate s duplicate work , and provide s a single source of t ruth , which enable easy action tracking to ensure investigation recommendations are acted upon to close out identified issues.
Closing out issues often requires a change to be introduced or risk assessments to be revised. When it comes to changes such as a revised procedure or a new process design, this is where direct integrations with Management of Change (MoC) processes mean that the end-to-end process can be closed out and kept visible.
As for revising risks, much the same issue can be found here : incidents can be linked to Risk Management or Process Hazard Analysis , breaking down the silos between the risk and engineering teams and the teams carrying out investigations.
Best-in-class companies can assess the effectiveness of controls during an actual incident investigation and, with direct integrations, use the actual data to re-assess risk bowties . The outcome is more confident risk analysis and effective controls.
Trend analysis and acting on lessons
Unfortunately , many companies still don’t have the possible quality of insight on incident trends . The majority of reports and dashboards focus on what happened, how many, when and where ( number of events, date s , site s , injury type s , etc. ), but the key question of why remains unanswered , leaving leaders to make their own judgements without the valuable insights that can be found when causal analysis data is aggregated.
Simply put, knowing how many or where incidents are happening is not enough to enable effective decision – making at a strategic level.
Sharing and applying lessons from one incident to other sites in a company is one of the key benefits of a strong incident management system.
For example, one of Enablon’s customers, a large chemical company , identified a vulnerability in one of its processes during an incident investigation. By leveraging global action plans, they were able to issue actions to identify other sites where this vulnerability was also present and take remedial measures . This information was collated in a dashboard to track closure of these actions.
It’s a s imple but effective example of how companies are using incident management systems to improve process safety performance by preventing repeat incidents.
In summary, when implementing a process safety management framework, consider the big picture and think about how incident management systems, management of change, risk management, process hazard analysis, action plans, and other functions will integrate and work together.
