Lessons

Key learnings or Lessons from incidents are categorised according to these pillars & elements or focus areas of Process Safety Management Frameworks (click the icons below for details):

Commit

COMMITMENT & CULTURE
COMPLIANCE WITH STANDARDS
COMPETENCY
WORKFORCE INVOLVEMENT
STAKEHOLDER ENGAGEMENT

Understand

PROCESS KNOWLEDGE
RISK ASSESSMENT

Manage

OPERATING PROCEDURES
CONTROL OF WORK
ASSET INTEGRITY
CONTRACTOR MANAGEMENT
MANAGEMENT OF CHANGE
OPERATIONAL READINESS
OPERATIONAL INTEGRITY
EMERGENCY PLANNING

Learn

INVESTIGATE INCIDENTS
PERFORMANCE INDICATORS
AUDITS & REVIEWS

These have been developed from the following Process Safety Management (PSM) frameworks


The AIChE Center for Chemical Process Safety (CCPS) developed the Risk Based Process Safety (RBPS) Management approach which defines 4 pillars and 20 elements:

  1. Commit to Process Safety
  2. Understand Hazards and Risk
  3. Manage Risk
  4. Learn from Experience

The Guidelines for Risk Based Process Safety are available both as a summary and a book and are visualised as follows:

Pillars (Foundational Blocks) and associated Elements that constitute a sturdy RBPS Management System
Image Credit: CCPS

The following CCPS publications also offer interpretations of the lessons to be learned from significant major accidents against their RBPS framework:


The Energy Institute (EI) developed the High Level Framework for Process Safety Management which has 4 focus areas which define the high level components.

  1. Process Safety Leadership
  2. Risk Identification and Assessment
  3. Risk Management
  4. Review and Improvement

The EI PSM framework is available here which includes links to workshops proceedings and guidance on meeting expectations of specific elements.


The IChemE Safety Centre (ISC) developed a framework (not a management system) to view process safety across an organisation. This has 6 major elements:

  • Knowledge & Competence (KC)
  • Engineering & Design (ED)
  • Systems & Procedures (SP)
  • Assurance (AU)
  • Human Factor (HF)
  • Culture (CU)

The ISC framework is centered on Leadership and applies throughout the lifecycle from DesignConstructionOperation, Maintenance & ongoing Integrity to Decommissioning or Abandonment:


Incidents are also categorised using the Process Safety (PS) Taxonomy from the Mary K O’Connor Process Safety Center.


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