Process Safety Management (PSM) at a facility is typically implemented to satisfy regulatory requirements because it is the minimum necessary for successful management of the facility. Ultimately managers are rated by top management on good financial performance, compliance with regulations, and an absence of safety, health and environmental incidents. Thus, lagging indicators such as the OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) log are commonly used resulting in incidents when process safety performance has not been up to par. For the most part, good PSM performance is left to the interpretation of process safety professionals in the facility and, in the absence of incidents, is not viewed as part of good overall management performance.

If practical process safety performance indicators, similar to financial indicators, were provided to management, it would give them a tool to rate good PSM programs and provide an impetus for superior performance in this area. These performance indicators should be, similar to the financial ones, relatively simple to understand and give top management a measure to which site management would be held accountable.

It is proposed that these indicators be based on activities that increase the short-term risk of the facility, such as open Management of Change (MOC) items, unresolved Process Hazard Analysis (PHA) recommendations, out-of-service critical instrumentation and unaccomplished refresher training, among others. Longer term measures such as audit findings, incident investigations, PHA completion, emergency manual upkeep, etc., would continue to be traditionally monitored. The paper will discuss and describe how these indicators would be structured, the method and frequency of their determination and the potential corrective actions that would improve performance.