The Role of Competency in Process Safety Incidents

Process safety incidents are investigated by analysts using methods such as root cause analysis. The objective is to identify the fundamental reasons for the incident that occurred so that appropriate corrective measures can be taken to prevent a recurrence of the incident or similar ones. Notably, few incident investigations identify lack of competency as a contributing cause. This omission is surprising because lack of competency has been identified as a significant contributor to some notable incidents and a careful reading of many incident reports leads to a realization that lack of competency clearly was a contributor despite its absence from the list of identified root causes. In fact, a case can be made that this issue likely underlies most process safety incidents that have occurred.

Avoidance of process safety incidents requires competency by all people associated with a process ranging from management through engineers to front-line personnel such as operators and mechanics. Competencies of various types are important such as capabilities, skills, knowledge, understanding, experience, and attitudes.

This paper examines a large set of process safety incidents to identify the sources and types of lack of competency that contributed to them. A statistical analysis is provided to identify the most significant contributors. Reasons for lack of competency are posited and recommendations are made to address them.