Course Objectives

The course is an introduction to Process Safety Management, explaining the need for a modern approach to the management of major hazards in the chemical, oil and gas industry sectors. Its primary objective is to provide the participants with the skills necessary for setting up and/or operating Process Safety Management systems which address major hazards of fires, explosions, toxic substances releases, hazardous reactions, and runaways. The course equips participants with the means to succeed in safety terms as process, project, and production engineers or to attain specialist status in Process Safety Management.

Who Should Attend?

Engineers working in the process industry (chemical, petrochemical, oil and gas) in projects, process design, operational production and specialist process safety careers, etc.

Prerequisite Courses

None

Course Overview

Progressive Process Safety Management framework (linking depth of risk study to severity of process hazards - going all the way from Process Hazard Analysis (PHA) to Quantitative Risk Assessment (QRA))

Incorporating Process Safety into new projects

Principles of Inherently Safer process design

PHA methods, subjects and checklists - addressing fire, explosion, toxic release, reactive chemical hazards

Using PHA to derive worst case and probable scenarios. The search for atypical scenarios and `Black Swans

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Hazard and Operability Study (HAZOP) - includes case studies

Simple methods for estimating severity of all identified hazardous scenarios (fire, explosion, runaway reactions, toxic release etc.)

Tolerability criteria (people effects and environment)

Layer of Protection Analysis (LOPA) - includes case studies

Criteria for deciding if a risk is tolerable or not - ’As Low as Reasonably Practicable’ (ALARP)

Process safety metrics, reporting incidents, Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) - Trending etc.

Human factors basics (human error, human reliability to respond to stimuli such as alarms)

Process safety culture (based on Baker Report recommendations)

Process safety competence assurance

Case studies based on Buncefield (major fire and explosion) and BP Texas City (explosion)

Case review - Deepwater Horizon: what happened, how was the disaster finally stopped and what are the long-term issues?

Root cause investigation

Self-assessment and auditing

Mode of Delivery

The delivery is backed up by real life case studies and an evaluation of the level of the understanding of the participants. The overall Process Safety Management systems are described, and all the necessary tools are explained to allow the participants to adapt them for training others in their organisation.

Course Materials

Course notes