UNIVERSITY OF HULL

57144 - ENVIRONMENT, PROCESS

SAFETY AND PROJECT MANAGEMENT

Student: Yuri Smith Mehmere

ID : 201309950

QUESTION

What are the possible key process safety risks at a facility

that should be identified so that employee, community and
company interests are adequately protected?

THE SWISS CHEESE MODEL

The Swiss cheese model focuses on the active and

latent failures that are represented as holes in the
barriers and the potential for this hole to be breeched,
it is when these holes line up that the potential for a
major accident increases as any deviation will push
through all the barriers and result in the wider incident.

The hazard identification and risk management should

identify suitable barriers (Slices of cheese) with
minimising potential breech areas ensuring that
potential breeches in one layer do not align with
another. In other words, a problem wont lead to a
major incident because at least one barrier will prevent
the problem from propagating further.

Latent Conditions

Latent conditions are error conditions (such as design and

maintenance, as well as inspection, procedural or organisational
shortcomings) that are present within the system some time
before the onset of a recognisable accident sequence.

They may lie dormant for long periods before combining with
active failures to allow penetration of all the barriers. In other
words, all the Swiss Cheese holes are aligned.

Active Failures

Active Failures are the unsafe acts committed by those people at

the sharp end, predominantly operators and maintenance
technicians. These can be lapses, mistakes or procedural
violations. They have an immediate, but usually short-lived impact
on the defensive barriers.

They often occupy the spotlight on subsequent accident

investigations as they tend to be the immediate triggering event.

IDENTIFY HAZARDS

The Health and Safety Executive define hazard as: Anything

that may cause harm e.g. chemicals, electricity, working from
ladders, noise etc.
In the context of process safety we can consider a hazard to
be: Anything that can lead to catastrophic accidents
particularly structural collapse, explosions, fires and
toxic releases associated with loss of containment of
energy or dangerous substances.

HOW WE IDENTIFY HAZARDS?

Hazard Identification
Techniques :

HAZOP (HAZARD AND

OPERABILITY STUDY)

HOW WE EVALUATE
CONSEQUENCES?

Risk Assessments

THE 3 P'S

Plant
Process
People

AVOID INCIDENTS AND MITIGATION

COMAH Regulations
Permit to Work
Emergency Plans

BHOPAL

Loss of Containment
Is a situation where dangerous substances (eg. liquids, gases,
electricity) escape from pipes, pumps, tanks, containers, etc. It
also relates to incidents where solids (eg. metal structures and
equipment) are projected through the air, fall from height, etc.
In the vast majority of major incidents, loss of containment is
the principle cause.

This incident was caused by water being added

to a methyl isocyanate storage tank, causing
anexothermic reaction. The situation was
made worse by the fact that many safety
systems had either been disabled or not
maintained.

CONCLUSION

Process Safety, like Personal Safety, depends on everyone

being fully committed to playing their part in minimising the
possibility of major accidents occurring.
Dealing with Lives

REFERENCES

Environmental and Process Safety Module