The people side of process safety

During the past decade, the oil and gas industry has experienced frequent disasters. As evidenced by the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil well disaster, safety excellence is yet to be achieved. In response to these events, various investigations have led to the publication of recommendations, both for the involved parties and for the wider industry. A key recommendation from the Texas City Refinery disaster highlighted the need to distinguish carefully between process safety and personal safety, and to manage these two types of safety differently (Hopkins, 2011). While it is acknowledged that personal safety systems are far from the silver bullet for managing risk, from the events of the past decade, it is clear that processes and systems are only as good as the people who run them and that there is a need to integrate person and process based safety approaches. We need to consider how the person component interacts with the processes for safety and the ultimate role that individuals and groups within organisations play in the success of our safety interventions. If a process safety initiative is conceptualised similarly to other organisational interventions, people play a significant role in determining the success of a process safety initiative. To illustrate this concept, this presentation demonstrates how applying key concepts from the disciplines of organisational psychology (e.g. change management), social psychology (e.g. team dynamics), and cognitive psychology (e.g. thinking patterns and habits) can make process safety initiatives more effective.