For your immediate review, please download the latest free resource paper from PII, titled Four Major Gaps That Are Preventing Most Companies Worldwide from Achieving Excellent Process Safety Performance, co-written by Jeff Thomas, PII Principal Engineer & Instructor, and William G. Bridges, PII President, and being presented at the 14th Global Congress on Process Safety in Orlando, Florida.

http://www.process-improvement-institute.com/_downloads/4_Gaps_in_PSM_-_FINAL.pdf

From the Abstract:

Process safety requires implementing many management systems, specific engineered features, and operating and maintenance practices effectively. Most companies believe they have done just that, and yet major accidents continue to occur. Why is that? What is missing? This paper looks at the statistics of major accidents, combined with results from audits and assessment from more than 50 chemical, petrochemical, oil/gas, and related processing companies world-wide. The paper illustrates the four major gaps that are common to the companies/sites that keep having major accidents, compared to those companies/sites that do not have such accidents:

  • Accurate and clear operating and maintenance work instructions (procedures)
  • PHA of all modes of operation, especially startup, shutdown, abnormal operations, and online maintenance modes
  • Getting Near Misses reported and investigated
  • Addressing human factors that are missing from most management systems

The paper describes some guidance for closing each of these gaps.

For other valuable free resource papers available from Process Improvement Institute, please visit the Free Resources section of the PII website at http://www.process-improvement-institute.com/resources/.