There’s no ‘I’ in safety

Chemical engineers are uniquely placed to lead major accident prevention, writes Fiona Macleod, but without involving others we risk repeating mistakes of the past

After 40 years in industry, I followed my passion for process safety into academia. I found a home in the University of Sheffield, teaching on the process safety and loss prevention master’s programme.

Learning to teach has been a journey of self-discovery, and I must credit my brilliant colleagues and wonderful students for humouring me along the way.

What have I learned?

Preventing major accidents requires a systems-thinking approach right from the earliest concept design. Chemical engineers are uniquely placed to lead, but we also need to recognise when to harness the specialist skills of our own profession and others, including statisticians, chemists, metallurgists and psychologists.

Equally as important, we need to consult the people with life experience, those at the sharp end who will work closest to the highest hazards day to day.

Preventing major accidents requires constant effort, adjustment and adaptation to the complexities of real people in the real world. Goal-setting regulation puts the onus on the operating company to understand their own hazards, to define their own safe operating envelope, and to control their own risks.

Past performance is no guarantee of future success, which is why it is so critical to recognise and address the current engineering skills shortage. As the Baker panel reported in 2007, in response to the BP Texas City refinery disaster: “The passing of time without a process accident is not necessarily an indication that all is well and may contribute to a dangerous and growing sense of complacency.

“When people lose an appreciation of how their safety systems were intended to work, safety systems and controls can deteriorate, lessons can be forgotten, and hazards and deviations from safe operating procedures can be accepted.”

“When people lose an appreciation of how their safety systems were intended to work, safety systems and controls can deteriorate”

Through the Safety Centre, IChemE is preparing to launch two new courses to support skill development in process safety in our wider curriculum.

Risk-based process safety leadership (RBPSL) focuses on the adaptive leadership practices that underlie effective risk management. Through eight modules, we ask: what leadership practices enable or prevent this happening? And enacted by whom? A senior leader? Shift supervisor? Maintenance specialist? Purchasing professional or finance director? Illustrated by real-life incidents, the focus is not on the technical tools, but how to communicate and influence effectively across an organisation.

Beyond the Dashboard is a shorter course for board-level executives and senior managers to consolidate risk literacy and assist company directors and financiers, including those without a technical background, to ask the right questions: What can go wrong? What can happen when it goes wrong? What does the organisation need to do well to prevent it happening and what can provide confidence that those actions are being achieved?

Unless risk management is part of the competence expectation of everyone working in or adjacent to high-hazard industries, we will continue to repeat the mistakes of the past.