• We don’t know when or exactly how the economy will rebound, but it will happen.  I am not an economist, but I do not expect a sudden or radical upswing in the economy. There will be no fanfare announcing we have recovered.  To me, this feels like late 1975, when the US economy was recovering from  another serious downturn.

    My observations from that time reveal a number of concerns especially when transposed on the losses of experience and expertise leading up to the present downturn:

    1. Many of our leaders have not experienced this and may be reluctant to go too far preparing for the recovery until they see over whelming evidence of the recovery.  This may cause  restarting or increasing operations to be done more quickly.
    2. Losses of experience and expertise across the organization may have been lost or forgotten over the tough times. The tasks may have been delegated to different people who may not be prepared to handle a large influx of system and equipment changes.
    3. Staff organizations may have taken the brunt of the personnel cutbacks. Since they are not a direct part of the manufacturing process, their role in recovery may be overlooked.
    4. There may be a backlog of deferred activities, maintenance inspections, operating procedure changes and training are likely suspects. This backlog may exist due to processes being idled for a period, and these systems did not require attention.
    5. There will be an influx of furloughed employees returning and new employees being hired. This taxes many of the operating systems from HR, and quality to operations, maintenance and training.

    Here are a few questions for comment and discussion:

    ” What is your company doing to prepare for the economic recovery? “

    “If you were to begin developing a plan for economic recovery, where would you begin?”

    What are the top 5 concerns you have when looking toward the potential upswing in the economy?”

    (I selected 5 do make you reflect on those that are unique or imperative to a safe recovery)

    CCPS is developing a project around this topic and getting input from a broader audience will benefit the effort. If you company has a system for addressing these concerns and you can share it, please e-mail it to me at john@phms.us.com or make a comment here. You company’s name can be removed to provide anonymity, but the company’s support would be recognized in the acknowledgments.

    John Herber

    CCPS Staff Consultant

  • As I celebrated my retirement from a corporate staff position, a number of people commented on my passion for process safety. That caused me to reflect on the source of that passion.

    Over the 35 years of working in industry, I saw the effects of serious process incidents on people, businesses and the chemical industry.

    My first experience was Sam, an hourly worker whose arms were striped by skin grafts. He was torching a hole in a “non-hazardous” chemical pipe when it flashed and burned his arms, chest & neck.

    As a rookie process engineer, I was responsible for a process that used Acetic Anhydride, a corrosive chemical that forms acetic acid when exposed to moisture. The operator adding this material to the batch he lost his grip on the charging tube and was splashed in the eyes. Although he was wearing the required PPE, it wasn’t adequate to protect him. Fortunately, his sight was not damaged by the event.

    At the ripe old age of 25, I became a Production Supervisor for a production crew. I understood my production responsibilities, but the sobering assignment was to safeguard the safety of each of those workers; as my supervisor put it,” Send each of them home to their families in the same condition as the came here”. That was a tall order especially with a young, inexperienced crew and supervisor.

    Later in my career, I was a project engineer and installing a control system a one of our plants. The tight timeline caused us to work double shifts and I was overseeing the night shift. One morning as I came out of the shower, the TV was announcing a tragic accident at our plant – the one where my project team and construction crew were working. It took a few attempts before I could verify the location of the event and that my team was safe. Unfortunately, 3 contractor employees died in a confined space entry accident.

    Another instance was an afternoon phone call while on vacation. The Engineering Manager told me we had an explosion at one of our plants and I was assigned to lead the reconstruction team. Three people has died in that explosion, I knew 2 of them. I can’t explain the emotion of walking through that building to assess the damage and prepare a plan to rebuild it, but I can still see the twisted steel, the blacked equipment and hear the dripping of the fire protection water. As I have told many, “It changes what you think about when you go to church”.

    Yet another incident occurred at the plant where I had been a process engineer and production supervisor. The staff safety department was alerted of an incident, and I was called into a conference room with our management team to describe the area and equipment involved in the event. Our minds were reeling with questions, about the location, process and damages. I wondered about who had been involved, even though I knew there were no fatalities.

    What do all these events add up to? Did I work for companies with poor safety programs? Did I happen to be “unlucky” across my career? No, the companies I worked for had good safety records and effective safety programs. These experiences came across 35 years that paralleled the early days of OSHA and preceded the PSM regulation by 20 years.

    Is my memory “too good”? Yes, and for that I am thankful.

    Our memories and experiences shape who we are, how we think and hopefully how we act. To me, this means that I am actively trying to advance process safety through my professional life. It means I use these events and others across the industry to punctuate the process training and hazard analyses I perform.

    Incidents are warnings that bad things can happen, even to good companies and operations. Our challenge is to keep these events alive in our company cultures so people learn from them. Actual events in a remind us that,”It can happen here!!”

    The number of serious events in the chemical industry has fallen due to regulatory influences and improved systems. As the number of events hopefully continues to fall, it becomes more difficult to position them as learning experiences. We need to retain the memories no matter how painful they may be so they remain a vivid reminder of what CAN occur.

    And that, my friends is why I am passionate about Process Safety

  • PHMS, LLC was founded in 2009 and provides effective and efficient process hazard services to the Chemical Process Industry. Thirty Three (33) years of chemical process experience, including manufacturing, process & capital engineering and EHS Staff positions, means PHMS can “right-size” a management system to the customer’s needs. The focus is to reduce the risk of a process-related events through optimal prevention systems. Services include: process design reviews for functionality and safety, PHA Facilitation, PSM and RMP Program development and training, risk assessment, consequence modeling, auditing and assessment of process systems, incident investigation, pre-merger assessments and post merger integration.

    PHMS LLC has three primary objectives:

    1. Improve process safety through application of process knowledge
    2. Advance the science of process safety through involvement in CCPS
    3. Build process safety understanding through undergraduate education

   

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