The digital representation of safety systems at “Seveso” plants and its potential for improving risk management

At Seveso plants, duty holders must have a complex system for assessing and managing risks. The pillars of this system are the safety report and the safety management system, with a number of underlying documents. The strength of the system is the high standardization of these documents. Regulations, standard codes and guidelines define content, structure and formats. The weakness is the high complexity. Managers and workers perceive documents as difficult to understand and far from actual operations. Major threats for the credibility of documents (and therefore for the safety systems) come from the continuous organizational and technical changes, which in a short time can make most documents obsolete; as well as by near misses, which continuously show the holes in safety systems. A big effort is required to follow up the plant changes and the near misses. In order to help safety managers, a new software has been developed. At Seveso plants, it has been possible build an integrated digital representation, because all documents are perfectly structured. This representation may be used both for updating the relevant documents after a change and to improve documents after a near miss or an accident. In this way, safety documents are always up to date and trustworthy and the huge knowledge, which is usually hidden inside safety documents, is clearly revealed and revived. The approach is basically “knowledge based” and the intention is to provide safety managers with an easy and simple tool. IRISonLine is a software that has been developed by ISPESL to provide safety managers of “Seveso” establishments with a tool for improving the management of change and of near misses.     

The role of risk avoidance and locus of control in workers’ near miss experiences: Implications for improving safety management systems

The process industry has made major advancements and is a leader in near-miss safety management, with several validated models and databases to track close call reports. However, organizational efforts to develop safe work procedures and rules do not guarantee that employees will behaviorally comply with them. Assuming that at some point, every safety management system will need to be examined and realigned to help prevent incidents on the job, it is important to understand how personality traits can impact workers' risk-based decisions. Such work has been done in the mining industry due to its characteristically high risks and the results can be gleaned to help the process industry realign goals and values with their workforce. In the current study, researchers cross-sectionally surveyed 1,334 miners from 20 mine sites across the United States, varying in size and commodity. The survey sought to understand how mineworkers' risk avoidance could impact their near miss incidents on the job – a common precursor to lost-time incidents. Multiple regressions showed that as a miner's level of risk avoidance increased by 1 unit in the 6-point response scale, the probability of experiencing a near miss significantly decreased by 30% when adjusting for relevant control variables. Additionally, a significant interaction between risk avoidance and locus of control suggested that the effect of risk avoidance on near misses is enhanced as a miner's locus of control increases. A one-unit increase in locus of control appends the base effect of risk avoidance on near misses with an additional 8% decrease in the probability. Findings are discussed from a near-miss safety management system perspective in terms of methods to foster both risk avoidance and locus of control in an effort to reduce the probability of near misses and lost time at the organizational level within the process industry and other high-hazard industries.     

Cost–benefit analysis approach for the management of industrial safety in chemical and petrochemical industry

The high complexity of chemical and petrochemical installations determines a complex safety management of these establishments, therefore, there is a need to find innovative solutions to guarantee the prevention of failures and losses of containment from process equipment. In this frame, the use of the API Risk Based Inspection (RBI) assessment approach permits a significant reduction of maintenance costs and, simultaneously, the increase of plant's reliability and availability. To increase the level of industrial safety, a proper selection of measures is also needed, even if the adoption of such measures poses costs. Given that resources for the companies are usually limited, a comparison amongst various solutions has to be done with the aim to find the best one, based on a comparison of costs and benefit. To this scope, recently a software, named Inspection Manager, has been developed by ANTEA and implemented thanks to a cooperation with the University of Padova (Italy). The Inspection Manager provides support in the application of the RBI approach by means of the use of plant-specific data, which are stored in its database; its further implementation, presented in this paper, has made it able to support also cost-benefit analysis and, thus, the selection of measures to be adopted to prevent accidental events causing the release of hazardous materials. A case-study is presented to test the new functionality of the tool; after the identification of the most effective measures, a careful cost-benefit assessment has been executed as a basis for decision-making.     

Current situation of certification system and future improvements of the occupational health and safety management system for loss prevention in Korea – Focused on KOSHA 18001

The world has increasingly been establishing guidelines for industrial safety and health to promote occupational safety and health. The Korean government is also providing the establishment, execution, coordination and control of the industrial safety and health policy and safety assessment and improvement for harmful and dangerous machines, instruments, and equipment, protective devices, personal protective equipment, etc. Specifically, this centered on the ILO enacted ILO-OSH 2001 guidelines, for safety and health management system in 2001. However, varied modifications were adopted because the ordinances and guidelines are diverse by nations. In addition, Korea has introduced and disseminated the safety and health management system to workplaces since 1999. However, businesses have shown reservations to introducing the safety and health management system on economic grounds. There are a lot of losses in the business because they lack experts group in the workplace and operate the quality, environment, and Safety & health management systems separately. Accordingly, in this study, KOSHA have investigated the problems and the future improvements of the safety and health management system.     

The role of standardization in safety management – A case study of a major oil & gas company

This article discusses the strengths and weaknesses of various kinds of standardization, when applied to the field of safety management. Recently, there are signs that organizations operating in high risk environments take further steps towards standardization. On the positive side, standardization has the potential to enhance the predictability of normal operations as well as facilitating the transfer of lessons learnt across organizational contexts. On the negative side, standardization is by definition a strategy for dealing with known hazards and accident scenarios. We discuss how too strong an emphasis on standardization can involve unintended negative consequences for organizations’ crisis-handling capabilities.     

What is most important for safety climate: The company belonging or the local working environment? – A study from the Norwegian offshore industry

Obtaining knowledge about factors affecting health, safety and environment (HSE) is of major interest to the petroleum industry, but there is currently a severe shortage of relevant studies. The aim of this study was to examine the relative influence of offshore installation (local working environment) and company belonging on employees’ opinions concerning occupational health and safety. We analyzed data from a safety climate survey answered by 4479 Norwegian offshore petroleum employees in 2005 on the dimensions “Safety prioritisation”, “Safety management and involvement”, “Safety versus production”, “Individual motivation”, “System comprehension” and “Competence” using one way analysis of variance (ANOVA), effect size and mixed model. The companies differed significantly for “Safety prioritisation”, “Safety versus production”, “Individual motivation”, “System comprehension” and “Competence”. The local offshore installation explained more of the safety climate than the company they were employed in or worked for did.     

Making work environment auditable – A ‘critical case’ study of certified occupational health and safety management systems in Denmark

This paper discusses the impact of certification on occupational health and safety management (OHSM) systems. Most research in the field has focused on how well such systems comply with voluntary standards such as OHSAS 18001 or with national and international legislation. However, this paper shows that even in cases of compliance, the certified systems have problems dealing with a range of contemporary complex work environment issues. Furthermore, certification also transforms the kinds of topics addressed and the procedures and activities applied in the system. Using the (in many ways successful) development of certified OHSM system in a manufacturing company in Denmark as a critical case, we demonstrate how certified OHSM systems unintentionally yet actively create an environment of ‘measurable and auditable facts’ shaped not only in response to legal and market demands for a safe work environment, but also as a consequence of the external demands for a visible and accountable work environment standard. We show how certified OHSM systems function like a hinge between internal operations and an external audience in a globalized market, thus giving priority to work environment issues that may later become demonstrable guarantees for a safe and healthy work environment. Thus the certified management system does not necessarily tackle the most urgent work environment issues and may exclude important aspects of the work environment such as psychosocial factors.     

Recognition primed decision making and the organisational response to accidents: Überlingen and the challenges of safety improvement in European air traffic management

The pioneering work of Rasmussen, Reason and their colleagues has greatly improved our understanding of the longer term causes of adverse events in safety-critical systems. Far less attention has been paid to the organisational decision making that characterises the response to accidents and incidents. Therefore, this paper examines the interventions by national and international agencies after one of the most serious accidents in European Air Traffic Management. Insights from Naturalistic Decision Making (NDM) and Recognition Primed Decision Making (RPDM) are used to explain the complex ways in which technical, organisational and political constraints shape and support the decisions and actions taken by different agencies. These constraints affect national and international safety organisations in the aftermath of major accidents. In particular, this paper uses NDM and RPDM to assess the interventions made by Swiss Federal agencies and by the Air Navigation Service provider (ANSP) following the Überlingen mid-air collision in July 1st 2002. Later sections show that there are strong similarities between the technical, organisational and political constraints that informed their decisions and the factors that directed the work of the European Organisation for the Safety of Air Navigation (EUROCONTROL). Some of EUROCONTROL’s safety responsibilities (i.e. the safety regulation elements) will in the future pass to the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA), an Agency of the European Commission. This transfer of responsibilities has the potential to increase the powers available to ensure the implementation of recommendations following future accidents. At the same time there is a danger that key aspects of existing safety and regulatory activities may be overlooked. It is critical, therefore, that the same level of audit and monitoring be conducted on the European agencies during the transition period as is proposed for service providers and national regulatory agencies. It is important to ensure that these changes do not inadvertently lead to the loss of insights from previous adverse events.     

Development and evaluation of RAMP I – a practitioner’s tool for screening of musculoskeletal disorder risk factors in manual handling

RAMP I is a screening tool developed to support practitioners in screening for work-related musculoskeletal disorder risk factors related to manual handling. RAMP I, which is part of the RAMP tool, is based on research-based studies combined with expert group judgments. More than 80 practitioners participated in the development of RAMP I. The tool consists of dichotomous assessment items grouped into seven categories. Acceptable reliability was found for a majority of the assessment items for 15 practitioners who were given 1?h of training. The usability evaluation points to RAMP I being usable for screening for musculoskeletal disorder risk factors, i.e., usable for assessing risks, being usable as a decision base, having clear results and that the time needed for an assessment is acceptable. It is concluded that RAMP I is a usable tool for practitioners.     

The role of drug and alcohol use and the risk of motor vehicle crashes in Shiraz,Iran, 2014: A case–crossover study

Background: Traffic accidents and traffic-related injuries and mortality have become a major public health concern in Iran. This study aimed to examine the role of drug and alcohol use in motor vehicle accidents in Iran.

Methods: This case–crossover study was conducted on 441 drivers who survived a road traffic crash and were taken to the emergency department of Shahid Rajaee trauma hospital in Shiraz, southern Iran. Data were collected using checklists that included demographic characteristics and drug and alcohol use prior to driving. Alcohol and drug use was identified through self-report, and cannabis, morphine, and methamphetamine urine tests were used to confirm drug abuse among drivers.

Results: In total 17.9% of drivers reported using drugs (cannabis, opium, or metamphetamine) and 8.84% of drivers reported consuming alcohol prior to the collision. The crude odds ratios (ORs) for having a crash for opium, cannabis, and metamphetamine were 1.94 (95% interval confidence [CI], 1.11–3.38), 2.37 (95% CI, 1.03–5.42), 5.5 (95% CI, 1.21–24.81), respectively, and for all drugs was 3.83 (95% CI, 2.28–6.43). The OR for alcohol was 3.5 (95% CI, 1.73–7.06) based on self-report.

Conclusion: Drug and alcohol use are increasing the risk of traffic crashes in Iran. Risk-reducing programs must be designed and implemented.     

Risk management in operations of petrochemical plants: Can better planning prevent major accidents and save money at the same time?

This paper presents an argument that improvement in operational safety can be achieved concurrently with increased operational efficiency. This is a fundamentally different viewpoint on the investment in safety. Traditionally, the cost of providing safety barriers is offset by the expected benefits of reducing the occurrence and severity of accidents. Our approach departs from this method of accounting for safety improvements and focuses on planning as a means of managing systems' response uncertainty and consequently reducing both major accident risk and the cost of operations. The scope of the paper is limited to interventions such as maintenance and repairs and defined in the context of major accident prevention e.g. hydrocarbon leaks. However, the developed methodology is general enough to be applied across the spectrum of process industry facilities and operations.     

Audience perceptions of high-status ties and network advantage: The market for coaching jobs in the National Collegiate Athletic Association (2000–2011)

Social ties with high-status others can be a potent signal of an individual's underlying quality and future promise. Individuals in competitive markets, therefore, have an incentive to publicly claim connections to high-status others. However, cognitive limitations and biases can make social network connections difficult for observers to reliably discern, and claims to high-status ties can go unrecognized by the audience. Our core contention is that claims to high-status affiliation are advantageous only when the audience recognizes the claim—unrecognized claims, like unreliable signals, do not deliver advantage and can backfire. Further, we draw on the literature on imprinting and develop arguments for why some people are more likely to make claims to high-status ties and why some claims to high-status ties are more likely than others to be recognized by the audience. We test our arguments with data from the market for head coaching jobs in NCAA basketball (2000–2011). Our study contributes to the sparse literature on how social network ties that exist in the minds of third-party observers influence individual attainment in market settings; and it offers new insights into how imprinting processes shape the perception and use of high-status network ties.