As part of Texas Chemical Council's (TCC's) ongoing commitment to help the state's petrochemical and related industries operate at the utmost level of process safety performance, board members have undertaken a formal action initiative.
"This is establishing a critical mass and then utilizing that critical mass to bring process safety improvement ideas, concepts and abilities to all our members, and even to nonmembers," said Rich Wells, Dow Chemical's vice president of U.S. Gulf Coast operations, site director of Texas operations and chair of the TCC Process Safety Committee. "This is for the whole industry."
The initiative focuses on training, "but there's going to be specific training not just on specific topics, but also for specific populations," Wells said in a recent webinar on TCC's process safety action initiative. "We are looking for our process technicians and how we get them the training they need before they even get to our companies. We are looking at training for engineers and the trade staff."
The initiative also includes a collection of best practices, Wells said.
"We are looking at what competencies we need to have in all of our rules, from a plant manager all the way down to a pipefitter, so that we have our best process safety game in place," he said.
Additionally, the initiative identifies other key action areas, including 20 elements of risk, high-risk scenario management, mechanical integrity practices, and Tier 3 and Tier 4 data.
Most importantly, Wells said, the initiative will "provide leadership to help people understand why it is necessary and to help them be successful."
More information about TCC's process safety action initiative is available at www.texaschemistry.org.
Identifying weak spots to avoid incidents
Bill Efaw, associate process safety director for Dow and vice chair of the TCC Process Safety Committee, said the initiative queried process safety experts across the industry who shared information about their responses to their companies' safety incidents.
"There are four areas we continue to see over and over again in the industry that are repetitive management system failures," Efaw said.
The first of those four areas is leadership and culture, and the second area involves operating discipline and management systems.
"The third area that rears its ugly head, especially in the United States, is process safety competency," Efaw said. "With the retirement tidal wave that we've had and is continuing -- and the large replacement of our workforce at all levels in our organizations -- the process safety competency is lacking."
Efaw stressed that companies "are trying to pedal as fast as they can to get their folks up to speed."
"Most people coming into our companies today have zero to very little process safety acumen when they walk in the door," Efaw said. "The reality is, the amount of turnover that we have had, not just in our operating people but in our contractor forces, is staggering."
The fourth area the initiative committee identified concerns technical design and risk tolerance.
"It's like, you have to take care of your old car, or it's going to break down," Efaw said.
Gregg Kiihne, director of process safety for BASF North America, encouraged all workforce members to become actively engaged in promoting safety.
"If you see something, are you raising the red flag? Are you questioning and challenging people to make sure that the answers you're getting are appropriate and they're not just blowing smoke?" Kiihne asked. "This isn't something that any one person in any one company can do. We all have to be working toward being accountable."
Chris Noonan, director of government affairs for TCC, moderated the discussion.
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