One of the key challenges an organization faces while implementing a Process Safety Management system is to establish or quantify the prevailing process safety culture. This assumes great significance and hence it is identified as a direct reflection of the commitment of the management towards PSM.
In India, the integration of safety during design stage is still nascent and hence the challenges of implementing process safety for older manufacturing facilities are largely dependent on people and operating procedures. Hence, the cultural part becomes a vital element in the overall framework of PSM. While many companies are still grappling with the complexity of safety culture measurement, an attempt to quantify the process safety culture becomes even more challenging and interesting.
The success of a PSM journey is driven by the maturity of the process safety culture the organization is able to establish and sustain.
This paper attempts to explain the model the authors adopted in Indian context to measure the process safety culture. Few of the key drivers include management climate, the view of the leadership team with respect to Cost Benefit Analysis on safety investments, benchmarking the existing systems against those best in class, the effectiveness of the Management of Change programs, measuring employee attitudes towards process safety, training and very understanding of the process safety incidents, to quote a few.
The process safety culture measurement process adopted includes a survey comprising direct interview with select cross section of personnel across the organization and also using technology tools to collect the feedback on the process safety performance of the facility.
The results are then correlated with the gap analysis study on the existing system which provides a first hand opportunity to validate the survey findings with the realities on the ground for the particular facility.
The case study provides an insight into the various driving factors in Indian context, which influence the process safety culture of the organization and how cultural differences across the various categories of employees viz., Leadership team, Managers, Field Executives and Contract employees provide a holistic view of the strengths, gaps and opportunities to work upon. It may be noted that this approach not only provides an opportunity to demonstrate employee stakeholder management but also ensures a collective process safety management system.
Measuring process safety culture helps organizations to set the baseline while embarking on the process safety journey and also channelize the resources towards and work on areas which will positively impact the program implementation. Needless to say, process safety culture score becomes a proactive indicator of process safety performance.
See more of this Group/Topical: Global Congress on Process Safety