The Weakest Link in Your Process Safety Program May be Sitting in Your Control Room

This presentation focuses on the lack of adequate training of control room operators across the industry, their multifaceted responsibilities and the type of competency-based training necessary to prepare them for the circumstances they will encounter while in control of billion-dollar units, and held responsible for the safety of employees and surrounding communities.

For the billions of dollars that are spent on unit construction and ongoing operations, the rigorous standards inherent in engineering, design, instrumentation, automation and safety systems, the day to day control of these plants rests in the hands of console operators for whom neither the state nor the industry impose any competency standards. Unlike every other discipline in the plant that requires some type of university accreditation, trade school or third-party trade certification, qualification to operate the plant is conferred upon console operators by their coworkers, who themselves were similarly trained and qualified.

Plants are relying increasingly on high-fidelity simulators to improve the performance of their console operators, by giving them real-life operating experience on a simulator built to accurately reflect the operating conditions of the actual plant. Once installed the responsibility for simulator training typically falls in the hands of an experienced operator, who through no fault of their own, never had a simulator on which to train. To provide these trainers with a structured, competency-based approach to simulator training it is necessary to develop a comprehensive set of unit-specific simulator scenarios. Real-life plant situations that when practiced and mastered prepare the console operator to manage the full range of process conditions as a competent professional. The presentation will discuss the need for third-party certification of control room operators and how this training approach improves the safe operation of process units and the entire plant.