Understanding “communication gaps” among personnel in high-risk workplaces from a dialogical perspective

Our primary aim in this paper is to argue for a discourse analytical take on questions of how risk and safety are managed by personnel in high-risk workplaces, with a special focus on constructions of “us” and “them”. Thus, we approach the same issue investigated in many other studies, i.e., diverging safety-related understandings between people representing various occupational groups. We choose to examine so-called communication gaps as they are “talked into being” in discourse, meaning that we treat them as primarily socially constructed. A case analysis based on interviews will be used to illustrate how we can understand this phenomenon from a communicative perspective inspired by Linell’s (1998a) dialogue theory. While previous discourse and safety culture research emphasizes broad patterns and differences between entire professions and departments, we argue that researchers should hesitate to reinforce the notion of homogeneous groups. Instead, there is great value in demonstrating collective social construction processes and commonalities so as to facilitate inter-group solidarity and possibly productive change.     

A retro-synthesis approach for hazard evaluation and risk screening

Risk screening instruments can be very useful for evaluating hazards and establishing priorities for risk reduction. Further, these instruments can provide educational value to field staff when they are distributed to individuals outside of traditional process safety roles. This paper describes a retro-synthesis technique whereby risk screening instruments can be readily generated for these types of hazard evaluation and priority setting activities. Further, by utilizing a retro-synthesis approach, data gathered at the field level can often be drawn upon at a later point if a more detailed risk assessment is required. The retro-synthesis approach involves working backwards from traditional risk functions (relationships) so as to define the predominant elements for incorporation within the risk screening instrument. Compared to conventional techniques, the retro-synthesis approach utilizes deductive reasoning techniques in a manner similar to Fault Tree Analysis (FTA). However, the directional relationships that are established between causes and consequences become inverted.For example, risk can be defined as a function of “likelihood” and “severity”, where “severity” may be a function of the “energy released” and the “exposure group”. Similarly, the “energy released” is often a function of the “properties of the material involved” and the “amount of material released”. Through identifying these relationships, “risk” in this example can be characterized as a function of “likelihood”, “exposure group”, “properties of the material involved”, and “amount of material released”. Further, by highlighting the various influential parameters, the relationships between each of these parameters, as related to risk, can also be understood. Once the various terms and functions are defined, screening categories can then be developed to quantify each of the terms so as to allow for an approximation of the relative risk involved for the given scenarios.This approach benefits from being simple to develop, maintaining alignment with the mathematics required for more detailed quantitative risk assessments, and generating screening categories which can be given to field staff. Through careful construction of the screening categories field staff can then rapidly, and in a reproducible manner, screen a large number of scenarios so as to identify those situations which represent priority hazards.     

油气管道风险可接受标准与应用评述

为改善油气管道安全状况,基于风险可接受在安全管理中的重要性,介绍国内外风险可接受的研究与应用现状。阐述风险可接受的原则,分析和总结不同国家的风险可接受标准及其在油气管道中的应用,探讨国内外在上述领域的发展现状和差距,并针对我国相关研究与应用提出建议。结果表明:风险可接受体系应建立在风险可接受定量化的基础上,同时需要制定风险可接受标准和相应的油气管道行业规范,并将其应用于国家和行业的安全管理中。     

Risk management and workers’ safety behavior control in coal mine

According to the risk management characteristics and the actual needs of safety production in coal mine, we thoroughly analyze the system of risk management method in coal mine and implement it in Geting Coal Mine. The system manages and controls the potential accident risks, hazard sources and human behavior risks. On this basis, the system of workers’ safety behavior control technology in coal mine is further studied, the “three disobeying” is classified and managed, the “three disobeying” database and safety countermeasures database are established, and the application software - the system of risk management and safety countermeasures optimization in coal mine based on B/S mode is developed and applied, which uses intranet to analyze and supervise the “three disobeying”, publish early-warning information, optimize management and control countermeasures; at the same time, the important prompting messages can be automatically sent to the mobile phones of relevant managers and the person in charge through public communication system in order to improve the real time capability and effectiveness of unsafe behavior control. The technological system and application software implemented in Geting Coal Mine has achieved good results.     

Utility optimization strategy of safety management capability of coal mine - A case study of JCIA

This article describes optimization strategy of SMCCM from perspective of utility of coal miner with the method of empirical research. Four elements of SMCCM are put forward which consist of “employee safety knowledge”, “equipment safety knowledge”, “environment safety knowledge” and “rule safety knowledge”. Eight elements of utility are put forward which consist of “benefit satisfaction”, “promotion satisfaction”, “job satisfaction”, “enterprise satisfaction”, “management satisfaction”, “colleague satisfaction”, “relationship satisfaction” and “communication satisfaction”. Then hypotheses of influence path between SMCCM and utility are proposed. JCIA is chosen as the sample to carry out survey, which questionnaire is designed based on the likert six-point scale to avoid the middle tendency of the test samples. Data analysis is done from following angles: analysis of the structure and utility of test samples, variables analysis of SMCCM and utility, model analysis of interaction between SMCCM and utility. And then results are obtained from the analysis of elements of SMCCM and elements of utility. Conclusions: first, “rule safety knowledge” should be strengthened above all; second, “job satisfaction” should be paid more attention to; third, coal miner’s benefit should be concerned specially.     

HAZOP – Local approach in the Mexican oil & gas industry

HAZOP (Hazard and Operability) studies began about 40 years ago, when the Process Industry and complexity of its operations start to massively grow in different parts of the world. HAZOP has been successfully applied in Process Systems hazard identification by operators, design engineers and consulting firms. Nevertheless, after a few decades since its first applications, HAZOP studies are not truly standard in worldwide industrial practice. It is common to find differences in its execution and results format. The aim of this paper is to show that in the Mexican case at National level in the oil and gas industry, there exist an explicit acceptance risk criteria, thus impacting the risk scenarios prioritizing process. Although HAZOP studies in the Mexican oil & gas industry, based on PEMEX corporate standard has precise acceptance criteria, it is not a significant difference in HAZOP applied elsewhere, but has the advantage of being fully transparent in terms of what a local industry is willing to accept as the level of risk acceptance criteria, also helps to gain an understanding of the degree of HAZOP applications in the Mexican oil & gas sector. Contrary to this in HAZOP ISO standard, risk acceptance criteria is not specified and it only mentions that HAZOP can consider scenarios ranking. The paper concludes indicating major implications of risk ranking in HAZOP, whether before or after safeguards identification.     

Societal risk acceptance criteria for gas distribution pipelines based on incident data from the United States

A significant number of pipeline operators use pipeline integrity management (PIM) to improve pipeline safety and reliability. Risk assessment is a critical step in PIM, because it determines the necessity of conducting the following steps in PIM for certain pipelines. Risk acceptance criteria are required in the process of risk assessment. Individual risk and societal risk are most frequently adopted as the two indicators of the risk acceptance criteria. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, quantitative societal risk acceptance criteria, especially for gas distribution pipelines, do not exit. The aim of this paper is to establish the societal risk acceptance criteria for gas distribution pipelines. Hence, FN curves were established using historical incident data from 2002 to 2017 provided by the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT). Linear regression and the ALARP principle are used in evaluating the limits of the negligible line and intolerable line to obtain a graphical societal risk acceptance criterion for gas distribution pipelines. A line having a slope of −1.224, and an anchor point of (1, 8.413 × 10⁻⁷) is proposed as the negligible line. Further, the intolerable line has a slope of −1.224, and an anchor point of (1, 2.524 × 10⁻⁶). Both the negligible risk and the intolerable risk for the gas distribution pipeline are lower than the current societal risk acceptance criteria for hazardous installations. The reasons for these relatively lower risk acceptance criteria are discussed.     

Improvement principles

Introduction: The improvement principles are a group of safety principles whose central message is that no risk level above zero is fully satisfactory, and that we should therefore always strive to improve safety. The major safety principles in this group are: as low as reasonably achievable (ALARA), best available technology (BAT), the substitution principle, vision zero, and continuous improvement. Method: This article investigates their similarities and differences, the ways in which they can incorporate compromises with objectives other than safety, and the difficulties that may arise in their application. A particular emphasis is put on comparisons with two major competing groups of principles, namely acceptance principles, which draw a sharp line between acceptable and unacceptable states of affairs, and weighing principles such as CBA that search for an optimized compromise between safety and other objectives. Results: In comparison to their main competitors, the improvement principles have the important advantage of consistently encouraging safety enhancements. However, some of the problems in their application can probably best be tackled by including them in a combined approach that also makes use of acceptance and/or weighing principles. Two such combined approaches are proposed. The choice between them should be based on the underlying value structure of the decision problem. Practical applications: Guidance is given for the choice of safety principles and for the combined use of more than one such principle.     

安全伦理与安全生产——解析安全伦理命题,制定“道德的”安全生产激励政策

从分析社会发展对安全伦理命题的关注和中国安全生产问题所引发的道德问题入手,指明安全伦理命题对社会经济政治发展的正面作用;依据道德选择和道德评价时所诉诸的安全伦理原则,区分"道德的"和"不道德的"两种安全生产伦理范式,并在该基础上提出一个制定"道德的"安全生产激励政策的选择方案:建立国家工业事故预防的伦理战略和伦理指导制度;制定"公平的"、"合理的"安全资源分配政策;制定中小企业的"道德的"安全生产管理战略;建立安全活动领域的防腐败机制,维护社会正义;从"人权"道德规范出发,创立新的安全生产规范。     

Valuing lives equally in a benefit-coast analysis of safety projects: A method to reconcile theory and practice

A value of statistical life (VSL) is used in cost-benefit analysis (CBA) as a monetary measure of the benefits to people from small risk reductions that arise from safety projects. Despite its widespread use in a number of countries, the concept of a VSL remains controversial, not least because it implies acceptance of the underlying ethical assumptions of CBA together with the idea that ‘social welfare’ can be measured and aggregated in some manner. In addition, to comply with theory, variable VSLs for different groups within society would be advocated. However, without fail, empirically, it is the case that those countries that employ a willingness to pay based approach to cost-benefit analysis of a safety project appraisal tend to use a single value for that accident context that is independent of the per capita income level, or indeed other personal characteristics, of the sub-group in society to which the safety improvement will actually apply. This article presents a straightforward, but theoretically justified adaptation to the calculation of a VSL which allows empirical practice by policymakers i.e. the application of a “common” VSL for any particular hazard within a given society, to be compatible with a CBA decision making approach.     

安全伦理学的建构——关于安全伦理哲学研究及其领域的探讨

安全伦理学是伦理学的重要基础。安全伦理命题始终存在着道德反省与不反省两种哲学态度,后者长期以来一直占主流,使得安全伦理学的研究滞后,导致其在安全科学学科体系中“空缺”。应当看到,在处理“安全获得与财富获得”的价值关系上,需要建构安全伦理理论,树立科学的安全价值观理论,因而需要制定一套能指导和判断安全活动或行为的道德规范标准。建构安全伦理学,首先要把安全道德作为研究对象;其次根据其特殊的规范性、明显的实践性和具体的专业性等性质特点,提出一种区分安全活动的道德与不道德的原则,并决定安全伦理学的基本问题,为了保存、尊重生命,维护个体的安全权益和增进个体的自由与安全地位平等的社会正义,安全活动应该遵循那些伦理规范;最后确定出该学科的研究方法。     

The safety chain: A delusive concept

Various governments have defined a so-called safety chain to structure their efforts in the field of risk management for low-probability disasters. The safety chain typically consists of the following components: proaction, prevention, preparation, repression. While the terminology suggests that the safety chain should be interpreted a series system, the safety chain more closely resembles a parallel system. This has important implications: the safety chain is not as weak as its weakest link; unreliable links need not always be strengthened as it will often be more efficient to rely on a few layers of protection, or just one. To avoid misguided efforts caused by the confusing terminology ‘safety chain’, we propose the use of the term ‘layers of protection’, as is currently the case in the Dutch flood safety policy. Furthermore, we show that imperfect preparedness for low-probability disasters is often perfectly defensible or rational, given the differences between the cost-effectiveness of investments in prevention and disaster preparedness.     

Exploring the perceived influence of safety management practices on project performance in the construction industry

Although safety management is known to be vital to construction projects, very few studies have solicited views from construction practitioners about their perceptions of which safety management practices (SMPs) are important to construction projects and related to project performance. An empirical study was undertaken in Hong Kong in order to shed more light on this topic. In the study, the importance levels of 15 popular SMPs and five project performance criteria were rated by 232 respondents. An exploratory factor analysis was conducted, and three SMP categories - information, process, and committees - were extracted. Of these three categories, safety management process was perceived by the construction practitioners as being the most important, followed by safety management information and committees. Moreover, the effect of the three SMP categories on a composite project performance variable was tested using hierarchical regression analysis. Results indicate that the “information” and “committees” categories were associated with project performance positively and significantly. One of the major conclusions of the study is that the construction industry has paid relatively less attention to safety management committees, which were empirically analyzed as having a strong perceived impact on project performance. In order to improve project performance, construction companies should promote the criticality of safety management committees.     

Use of safety barriers in operational safety decision making

Operational personnel in complex hazardous industries are regularly called upon to make decisions that balance the production and safety objectives of their organisation. Regulations and industry standards focus on defining and complying with operating limits of various kinds as the primary method of achieving the right balance. Such limits remove the need in many cases for in-the-moment judgements about safety and production priorities.Focussing solely on the compliance with a pre-defined envelope underestimates the direct contribution to safety from operational managers based on their professional judgement. Research in a chemical plant, a nuclear power station and an air navigation service provider has identified a “line in the sand” approach taken by experienced operating personnel when abnormal situations arise. In developing these situation-specific self-imposed limits, operational managers focus on the status of safety barriers, rather than considering risk from first principles. This approach could form the basis of a new procedure, which lays out the process to be followed in determining how best to proceed (similar to job safety analysis or permit to work). This would acknowledge that such decisions are necessary, assist operational personnel in making better choices and open such decisions to appropriate audit and scrutiny.     

What safety models and principles can be adapted and used in security science?

Engineering risk management is comprised of managing operational safety risks on the one hand and managing physical security risks on the other. Although some basic management principles are obviously the same for both safety and security, some important conceptual and calculation differences exist, as is explained in this paper. For instance, safety risk is usually calculated based on the scenarios’ consequences and likelihoods, while security needs to be determined by the assessment of vulnerability, the likelihood of attack and potential consequences. Nonetheless, there are also many similarities. Conceptual models, metaphors and principles that have been elaborated in the safety domain during the past century, many of them based on major accidents and their investigation, can easily be translated to the security domain. In the present study, we will explain how physical security should be seen in relation to safety, and what models and principles, derived from safety science, can be employed to manage the security aspects associated with physical threats.     

Highlights of LNG risk technology

The authors have recently undertaken a major review of LNG consequence modeling, compiling a wide range of historical information with more recent experiments and modeling approaches in a book entitled “LNG Risk-Based Safety: Modeling and Consequence Analysis”. All the main consequence routes were reviewed – discharge, evaporation, pool and jet fire, vapor cloud explosions, rollover, and Rapid Phase Transitions (RPT’s). In the book, experimental data bases are assembled for tests on pool spread and evaporation, burn rates, dispersion, fire and radiation and effects on personnel and structures. The current paper presents selected highlights of interest: lessons learned from historical development and experience, comparison of predictions by various models, varying mechanisms for LNG spread of water, a modeling protocol to enable acceptance of newer models, and unresolved technical issues such as cascading failures, fire engulfment of a carrier, the circumstances for a possible LNG BLEVE, and accelerated evaporation by LNG penetration into water.     

Influence of new generic frequencies on the QRA calculations for land use planning purposes in Walloon region (Belgium)

In Europe, the article 12 of the “Seveso” Directive focuses on land use planning (LUP) around major hazard plants and imposes to keep a sufficient distance between a major hazard plant and populated areas. In Belgium, the LUP is treated at the regional level. The regional authority defines the policy and manages the LUP according to the quantified risk. The quantified external risk, around each Seveso company in the Walloon Region, is assessed by a unique technical expert, the Faculté Polytechnique de Mons, by means of a full probabilistic approach (QRA). This QRA methodology uses accident generic frequencies published by the Flemish Region (Aminal, 2004). In 2009-2010, the quantification of the external risk of the 90 walloon Seveso plants will be completed, based on this set of generic frequencies. However, the Flemish Region recently published a new set of generic frequencies (LNE, 2009), which, in some cases, are quite different of the previous ones for some equipment. This paper discusses the influence of the new frequency data on the quantified risk. An overview of the changes induced by the new set of data will be presented, as well as their impact on the already defined "consultation zones" in which decisions are made concerning the compatibility of the land use and the intensity of risk.     

Risk reduction concept to provide design criteria for Emergency Systems for onshore LNG plants

The functional safety requirement is widely applied in the process plant industry in accordance with the international standards, such as IEC and ISA. The requirement is defined as safety integrity level (SIL) based on the risk reduction concept for protection layers, from original process risk to tolerable risk level. Although the standards specify both, the Prevention System and the Emergency System, as level of protection layers, the standards specify in detail only the use of the Prevention System (i.e., Safety Instrumented System (SIS)). The safety integrity level is not commonly allocated to the Emergency System (e.g., Fire and Gas System, Emergency Shutdown System and Emergency Depressuring System). This is because the required risk reduction can be normally achieved by only the Prevention System (i.e., SIS and Pressure Safety Valve (PSV)). Further, the risk reduction level for the Emergency System is very difficult to be quantified by the actual SIL application (i.e., evaluated based on the single accident scenario, such as an accident from process control deviation), since the escalation scenarios after Loss of Containment (LOC) greatly vary depending on the plant design and equipment. Consequently, there are no clear criteria for evaluating the Emergency System design. This paper aims to provide the functional safety requirement (i.e., required risk reduction level based on IEC 61508 and 61511) as design criteria for the Emergency System.In order to provide clear criteria for the Emergency System evaluation, a risk reduction concept integrated with public’s perception of acceptable risk criteria is proposed and is applied to identify the required safety integrity level for the Emergency System design. Further, to verify the safety integrity levels for the Emergency Systems, the probabilistic model of the Emergency Systems was established considering each Emergency System (e.g., Fire and Gas System, Emergency Shutdown System and Emergency Depressuring System) relation as the Overall Emergency System. This is because the Overall Emergency System can achieve its goal by the combined action of each individual system, including inherent safe design, such as separation distance.The proposed approach applicability was verified by conducting a case study using actual onshore Liquefied Natural Gas Plant data. Further, the design criteria for Emergency Systems for LNG plants are also evaluated by sensitivity analysis.     

Application of inherent safety principles to dust explosion prevention and mitigation

The aim of the current work is to explicitly link the inherent safety principles of minimization, substitution, moderation and simplification with strategies for dust explosion prevention and mitigation. A brief review of inherent safety and its basic principles is first given. This is followed by a discussion of various ways in which the dust explosion hazard can be minimized, substituted, moderated and simplified. Particular attention is paid to the relationship between each inherent safety principle and (i) various dust explosibility parameters, (ii) alternate methods of processing, (iii) selection of process equipment, and (iv) development and implementation of safe-work procedures. Original research results are presented, along with industrial case studies and previously published results that have been reinterpreted in terms of inherent safety and its basic principles. It is anticipated that this research will be of value to industry as a complement to the relatively well-established suite of engineered and procedural dust explosion risk reduction measures.     

安全苛求系统的交叉验收框架

交叉验收是一个涉及技术和法律的工作,其目的是在新项目中能够尽快地应用类似的产品、系统和方法(PSP)。交叉验收的PSP首先要求在原始的应用中能够满足可靠性、安全性和环境要求。PSP目标和原始的应用应具有很好的相似性,因此,不需要很大的改动,在技术上和经济上可行性会很强。当然,交叉验收从根本上来说和PSP的安全性和适用性有关。目前交叉验收缺乏系统的指导和专门的标准,笔者阐述的一个基于风险分析的结构化PSP交叉验收框架包括7个主要原则。该框架基于笔者多年在安全苛求系统和铁路领域开发应用控制风险和安全确信系统框架的经验,采用通行的原则,对于目前还未建立交叉验收系统框架的安全苛求系统尤其适用。