1. Breakout Session Summary Chemical Industry
November 1-2, 2007

2. Chemical Industry Team
Steve Rizzo
Roger Evans
William Blake
Edward Perz
Doug Jeffries
Tim Counihan
Greg Palchak*
Kirk Franklin
Dennis Hendershot*
Walt Siegfried*
William Maxson*
Kim Nibarger*
Jim Seger*
Mary Rihn**
*Moderators
**Student Assistant

3. Chemical Industry Fatalities
Personal Safety Related
Process Safety Related

9. Total Deaths – 358
Contractor Deaths - 202

10. Organizational Consistency With Trends
Data needs to be more robust –needs to include contractors/work activities
Small company vs big company data sets
Gender stat’s do not match demographics
Routine vs non-routine definitions, (example, maintenance, turnarounds are/not “routine”?)
Significant % of incidents begins with loss of containment (fires, releases causing exposure)

11. Most Significant Contributing Causes
Competitive forces --Too much focus on short term financial goals (affects resources, physical plant, maintenance, etc.)
Less than adequate (LTA) human resources
LTA hazard identification skills
More contractors ---LTA oversight
Procedures “drift”, LTA, or not practical
LTA accountability for incident prevention activities for all levels of the organization especially process safety

12. Most Significant Contributing Causes
Worker fatigue
LTA training of operators/maintenance & contractors, content, delivery, what and why
Contractor “training” –who, what
Overreliance on technology (training keeping up with tech.)
International operations and immigration challenges
Risk tolerance, language, competency, etc.

13. Most Significant Organizational Weaknesses
Failure to hold safety as core value -”walk the talk”
Disproportionate emphasis on OSHA rate and worker personal safety vs. process safety (need better balance; better personal safety does not necessarily equate with better overall safety)
Inadequate resources
Downsizing/lean organizations
Overload (fatigue, paperwork, time)
Technical competence is inadequate (education and understanding at all levels vs. simple training, check the box)
Investigation process needs improvement (rigor, real root cause, follow-up & close out of issues)
Implementation of Management of Change is not 100%
Recognize changes and their potential impact

14. Solutions & Best Practices for Fatality Prevention
Active, knowledgeable, visible leadership (demonstrated) and support from the top (CEO, Plant Manager, etc.)
Integrate safety expectations, responsibilities and accountability throughout organization
Effective mechanical integrity program
Equipment design engineers –safety tools to design hazards out of the process/system
High potential risk identification and analysis; conduct pre-task hazard assessment
Effective root causes investigation process with tracking of recommendations to completion (electronic tracking to verify?)

15. Solutions & Best Practices for Fatality Prevention
Adequate resources dedicated to EHS integration
Process Safety Management
Personal Safety
Effective PSM elements management system implementation/integration – compliance vs. “part of the culture”
Collect and review data which leads to special emphasis programs on fatality producing activities
Clear fatality prevention metrics, goals, accountability for safety performance, with regular review by management with all levels including CEO (caution with metric overload)

16. Areas of Future Research
How to change culture on individual risk taking and invincibility (not going to happen to me)
How to better develop personal hazard identification capabilities
How to identify leading/lagging metrics and performance indicators for fatalities
Including process safety performance
How to provide design engineers skills/knowledge to design risk out

17. Areas of Future Research
Training methodologies - best practices/most effective
How fatigue effects safety performance
Better tools to quantify benefit of safety expenditures (in the language manufacturing, financial, etc. understand – “EHS part of the team”)