Analysis of main accident contributor according to process safety management elements failure

Abstract

Process safety management (PSM) covers the aspect of process hazard identification, understanding the level of risk and hazard reduction to prevent process-related failures. The need for understanding on how the process safety elements fail is essential in improving the quality of the accidents prevention effort. In this paper, the contributions of PSM element to chemical process accident are studied using major process failures in the chemical process industry (CPI). Around 770 major accident cases were collected and analysed from several accident data base such as Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB-US), European Major Accident Reporting System (EMARS), Failure Knowledge Database (FKD-Japan) and Accident Reporting Information Analysis (ARIA). The PSM element failures were ranked in accordance to their frequency and importance in accident prevention. Based on the result, majority of the element failure is classified as design and technical reasons (53 % of total process failures) and the rest is related to management related causes (47 %). The most common accident contributors were identified to be the process hazards analysis (19 % of total process failures), operating procedures (17 %), employee participation (12 %), training (11 %), management of change (9 %), mechanical integrity (9 %), and permit to work (9 %). In depth, analysis on individual PSM elements were made for better understanding on their readiness and its implementation issues in the CPI. Appropriate suggestion for continuous improvement of PSM implementation will also be suggested.