Process safety and loss prevention focuses on preventing fires, explosions and chemical
releases from facilities that handle hazardous materials. Therefore, any business
that that handles significant amounts of flammable, reactive or otherwise hazardous
chemicals as part of their production will have some process safety risks.
By nature of the materials involved, even relatively small process safety incidents
can result in fatalities or very serious injury. Larger incidents have the potential
to have a significant impact on neighbours and / or on the environment. In any case,
there may be extensive damage to the facility which can lead to significant business
interruption costs, and in the worse cases the company may not recover financially.
Every year we hear of major accidents due to poorly managed process safety risks. More
recently there was the Buncefield oil storage depot fire in the UK in 2005, and earlier
this year there was the Deepwater Horizon explosion which killed 11 and released
a significant amount of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. These large incidents are in
the news, however, there are approximately 1300 serious process safety incidents
reported to the HSE every year, and many more probably go unreported.
In the UK and most developed countries, there are legal requirements to manage process
safety risks. The HSE has two main areas of regulation to manage process safety risks
in the UK - COMAH and DSEAR - which are actively enforced.
Compliance, however, should not be the main driver for having effective process safety
and loss prevention systems. Good process safety and loss prevention systems can
add value to your business by ensuring that the risks are properly controlled.
We will be developing this area to become a comprehensive resource for companies
and process safety practitioners, so we hope that you will return to check on our
progress.
