News – full story
The documents have been complied following a year’s worth of work
23/07/2015
ISC publishes guidance documents
Covers process safety competencies and metrics
Helen Tunnicliffe
THE IChemE Safety Centre (ISC) has published its first set of guidance documents for the process industries, covering staff competencies and lead metrics.
Process Safety Competency – a Model 2015, defines specific competencies for staff and creates a generic framework for many different types of roles within an organisation. It covers four levels of process safety competency – awareness, basic application, skilled application/proficient and mastery/expert and different roles from front line staff and engineers to management and executives. It builds on other, more generic guidelines.
Lead Process Safety Metrics – selecting, tracking and learning 2015, identifies high-value, easy-to-collect lead metrics for process safety, such as staff compliance with critical procedures, or inspections of safety critical elements (SCE). It does not include so-called lagging indicators such as incident rates or losses of containment, which can only indicate history, rather than help predict future events.
The documents have been complied following a year’s worth of work by ISC’s industry members, and ISC expects to produce more guidance documents in the future as needs are identified. ICS director Trish Kerin says that the new guidance booklets are living documents and will evolve and be updated over time.
“The ISC is pleased to offer this information freely, as we believe it is vital to assist companies in achieving better process safety outcomes,” says Kerin, adding: “We invite organisations who have an established sound process safety competency system and metrics, to please share their example to help us improve this guidance for everyone.”
Contact Kerin on [email protected] for more information, or visit the ISC website.
