The first pillar of Risk Based Process Safety Management is “Commitment to Process Safety.”\u00a0 A formalized mentoring system can ensure workforce involvement, compliance with company and regulatory requirements, increase the competency of personnel and enhance the process safety culture of the entire organization.\u00a0 Within this element there are several essential features that lead to a more effective process safety culture.<\/p>\n
Providing strong leadership is critical for any organization that strives to manage the risk associated with the activities associated with process safety.\u00a0 Leadership is a skill that is not necessarily intuitive to managers and mentors.\u00a0 Leadership is a skill that can be learned.<\/p>\n
In this Tip of the Month (TOTM), we explore process safety leadership.<\/p>\n
This TOTM is part of a paper that was developed by John M. Campbell (JMC) Instructor\/Consultants Clyde Young and John Kanengieter for presentation at the Center for Chemical Process Safety<\/a> (CCPS) 9th<\/sup> Global Conference on Process Safety [1].<\/p>\n Over the last several years, significant resources have been devoted to examining the issue of process safety culture, and strong leadership has been cited as a key element to enhance a process safety culture.\u00a0 Study of major accidents within the oil, gas, chemical and allied industries have found that the safety culture of organizations is often proposed as a contributing factor, and development of a culture of process safety as the solution.\u00a0 Presentations at symposia and conferences point to enhancing culture and providing leadership as necessary to address breakdowns in process safety management systems.<\/p>\n The first pillar of the Center for Process Safety (CCPS) Guidelines for Risk Based Process Safety<\/em> (RBPS) is “Commit to Process Safety.”\u00a0\u00a0 Supporting this pillar is the element \u201cProcess Safety Culture\u201d, which is defined as, \u201c the combination of group values and behaviors that determine the manner in which process safety is managed.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 One of the four essential features of process safety culture is \u201cstrong leadership.\u201d<\/p>\n Leadership<\/strong><\/p>\n What is \u201cleadership\u201d?\u00a0 It has been described as “organizing or influencing a group to achieve a common goal”.\u00a0 This would intimate that the leader is a boss or manager, but is a manager necessarily an effective leader?\u00a0\u00a0 There is considerable literature about leadership.\u00a0 This literature includes quotes about leadership, how to find \u201cnatural\u201d leaders and how to develop leadership skills.\u00a0 There are workshops about leadership and even university degrees in leadership.\u00a0 If there are so many resources dedicated toward understanding and teaching leadership, why is leadership listed as something that needs to be enhanced in symposia, papers and reports that deal with managing process safety in high hazard activities?\u00a0 It may be because leadership and culture are considered human factors. When associated with process safety, they are known as factors that can lead to loss of the standards of consistently reliable human performance.\u00a0 These standards are relied on as part of an organization\u2019s defenses against process safety incidents.<\/p>\n Every person working in the oil, gas, chemical and allied industries should perform their jobs under the guidance of a process safety management system.\u00a0 CCPS defines a management system as a \u201cformally established and documented set of activities designed to produce specific results in a consistent manner on a sustainable basis.\u201d\u00a0 Producing specific results in a consistent manner all the time requires that all personnel perform at a high level.\u00a0 If culture is defined simply as \u201cthe way we do things around here\u201d, this is influenced greatly by leadership.\u00a0 But leadership doesn\u2019t reside in the role of one person.\u00a0 Leadership needs to be imbedded within the organization with every person.\u00a0 This is a skill that can be learned by all and dependence on one individual with authority or one person who might be considered a \u201cnatural\u201d leader can lead to failure of the system.<\/p>\n When teams cease to function effectively and breakdowns are discovered in the system to manage process safety, it is highly likely that there is a breakdown in goals, roles and expectations in the team.<\/p>\n Every person working in or supporting the operation of a high hazard process must be able to recite and explain the goal of every team they work with.\u00a0 There should never be in any doubt what every team\u2019s goal is.<\/p>\n Because we may and probably do work on several teams, it is vital that we are clear of our role on each team.\u00a0 What is my primary function to support achieving the goal? There should never be in any doubt what every person\u2019s role is on that team.<\/p>\n Does each person on the team have a concisely developed set of expectations for individual and team behavior?\u00a0 Is there some way for the team to check that the expectations are being met?\u00a0 What is the procedure for addressing deviation from expectations?<\/p>\n A PetroSkills client recently asked for a one-day Overview of Risk Based Process Safety Management for Upper Level Management.\u00a0 Four sessions of this overview have been delivered around the world to the business unit managers and their direct (team members) <\/strong>reports<\/span>?.\u00a0 Leadership and working as effective teams are two elements of the session that address the issue of process safety culture in this client\u2019s operations.<\/p>\n A key learning point offered by participants is that a clear understanding of goals, roles and expectations comes from leadership and exhibiting the appropriate leadership role.\u00a0 Many leave the session with an action item to conduct team work sessions to establish\/reaffirm goals, roles and expectations.<\/p>\n If you would like a copy of the paper presented at the CCPS 9th<\/sup> Global Congress, contact PetroSkills<\/a>.<\/p>\n To develop process safety competency attend our PS-4, Process Safety Engineering<\/a>;\u00a0 HS-45, Risk Based Process Safety Management<\/a>; and PS-2, Fundamental of Process Safety<\/a> courses.\u00a0 To develop competency in other skills, attend one of our other courses.<\/p>\n John M. Campbell Consulting (JMCC) <\/em>offers consulting expertise on this subject and many others. For more information about the services JMCC provides, visit our website at\u00a0www.jmcampbellconsulting.com, or email us at consulting@jmcampbell.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n