As major incidents can occur at practically any step of a chemical or manufacturing process, it is of the utmost importance to have the necessary process safety systems in place. A company owes it to their employees to ensure that an operating system maintains its integrity and hazardous substances are handled appropriately.
In the oil and gas industry, “process safety” is often used interchangeably with “asset integrity.” In the associated asset integrity procedures, hazardous releases, structural failure and the loss of stability are often considered.
In this industry, key performance indicators (KPIs) are used to measure how a system is currently performing and what can be expected of its future performance. This method of continuously checking for improvements in a process typically uses three metrics:
- Leading indicators: maintain the strengths of barriers through forward-looking metrics indicating the performance of current safety measures
- Lagging indicators: measure the degree of barrier defects and their consequences, based on incidents that should be reported
- “Near Miss” indicators: incident-based metrics that provide indicators for potentially more severe incidents
These metrics are brought together into a process safety metric pyramid (Figure 1) which assesses how these should be incorporated into the larger process.
As I will be working at a liquefaction plant for natural gas next summer, I expect to learn much more about KPIs while on the job!
Figure 1. The process safety metric pyramid bringing together leading, lagging and “near miss” indicators.
Transport Blogs Fall 2018 