According to Wayne Howard, corporate process safety engineer with Valero, process safety information (PSI) is one of no less than 14 elements that comprise process safety.
Valero safety experts share successful PSI practices
Pictured from left are Valero Process Safety Engineer Wayne Howard and Process Safety and Occupational Safety Manager Matthew Lindquist.
Howard believes PSI ranks among the most influential on this list of safety elements, along with employee participation, process hazard analyses, operating procedures and training.
“Not surprisingly, PSI comes high on the list of these elements,” Howard said. “I see it as part of the foundation of a great process safety management program, along with the other factors you have to have.”
Contractors, pre-startup safety reviews, mechanical integrity, hot work permitting, management of change, incident investigation, emergency planning and response, compliance audits and trade secrets are elements that build upon those first five essential building blocks.
In a presentation discussing successful process safety practices at the Voluntary Protection Program Participants Association Summit, held this spring in Pasadena, Texas, Howard elaborated on the standard requirements of PSI — including requirements specifying that the employer shall complete a compilation of written process safety information before conducting any process hazard analysis.
Howard explained that this compilation of written PSI is designed to enable the employer and the employees involved in operating the process to better identify and understand the hazards posed by those processes involving highly hazardous chemicals.
“In particular, it asks us to compile information about the hazards of the highly hazardous chemicals used or produced by the process, including toxicity information, permissible exposure limits and hazardous effects of inadvertent mixing of different materials that could foreseeably occur,” Howard said.
Additionally, physical, reactivity, corrosivity and thermal and chemical stability data, “as well as information pertaining to the technology of the process and equipment in the process,” must also be included in the compilation, Howard said. “We also have safety issues which are being used,” he said.
Regarding information on the technology, Howard said sites are required to have a block-flow diagram or simplified process-flow diagram, and information on the particular chemistry that is occurring in the process.
“The maximum intended inventory helps indicate the intent for how much it will hold and safe limits for temperatures, pressure and flows,” Howard said.
This information must also pinpoint consequences of deviation, including safety and health consequences, or “what’s going to happen if you exceed your safe limits,” Howard said.
Finally, he said, if the original technical information no longer exists, it may be developed.
Joining Howard in the presentation, Matthew Lindquist, occupational safety manager with Valero, outlined “successful practices” rather than “best practices,” adopted by the company’s newly formed Process Safety Professional Network, a group consisting of process safety and designated safety professionals.
“One of the first products that we worked on was defining PSI, so we had the same understanding and expectation as to what PSI was at each of our facilities,” he said. “In addition, as part of that, we came up with specific definitions of what each of the components and obligations were and set a minimum bar for the minimum required information to satisfy and demonstrate compliance from each of the components in process safety information.”
Lindquist said there was minimal dissention from his team in adopting these practices.
“We had some head-butting on which software we were going to use, because people were already imbedded into a particular software and didn’t want to change,” he said. “There were some challenges there, I admit, but we did pretty well.”
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