Foundational Process Safety Training: Part 1

3. Competency

Key Lessons:
 What is the process safety competency & why is it
 important.
 Competence of process safety hazard and human
 barriers
 Key principles and essential features.
 Possible work activities.
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 Examples of ways to improve effectiveness of

compliances with standards.
 Metrics to monitor the performance of the process safety
competency.
 Management review topics related to the process safety
competency
 Common issues related to process safety competency in
the PSM surveillance.

What is it?
 Process safety competency is the capability to apply or use a set of related
process safety knowledge, skills, and abilities (fit for work) required to
successfully perform critical process-related functions or tasks. This
includes the perception of the process safety hazards associated with
operations activities, and the hazards that could result in process safety
events.
 The process safety competency process means all efforts associated with
develop, maintain, improve, and broaden of knowledge and expertise
through encompasses interrelated actions include continuously improving
knowledge & competency, ensuring that appropriate information is
available to people who need it, and consistently applying what has been
learned.

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 Organizational learning is the process by which an organization improves

itself over time through gaining experience and using that experience to
create knowledge. The knowledge created is then transferred within the
organization. Three key processes occur in organizational learning, 1-
Knowledge creation, 2- Knowledge retention, 3- Knowledge transfer.
 To achieve the element objectives, the company shall maintain dependable
practices that include establishing a PSM competence assurance program,
highlighting element benefits, and promoting a learning organization, then
the company shall execute activities that help maintain and enhance
process safety competency. Eventually, the company shall periodically
check the value derived from the activities.
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Competence of process safety hazard and human barriers

 The concept of Human/People Barriers refers to the measures put in place
to prevent human error from causing accidents or incidents in industrial
settings. These barriers include training, procedures, and performance
assurance. The goal of Human/People Barriers is to reduce the likelihood
of human error and mitigate its consequences by creating a process safety
culture that prioritizes risk awareness, hazard identification, and effective
communication. By implementing Human/People Barriers, organizations
can improve process safety performance, reduce the number of incidents,
and protect the health and wellbeing of their employees and the public.
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 The concept of risk competence refers to an individual's ability to

effectively manage risks and make informed decisions in the face of
uncertainty. Risk competence is a critical skill in many industries, including
finance, healthcare, and engineering, where decisions can have significant
consequences for individuals or society as a whole. Risk competence
involves several key competencies, including risk awareness, risk
perception, risk assessment, and risk communication. Individuals who are
risk-competent are able to identify potential risks and evaluate the
likelihood and consequences of different scenarios. They are also able to
communicate risk information effectively to others, enabling informed
decision-making. By developing risk competence, individuals can make
better decisions, reduce the likelihood of accidents or incidents, and
contribute to a safer and more resilient society.

 Process safety competency is a part of the management commitment, so it

is a critical component of a robust process safety management system.
Process safety competency involves ensuring that personnel involved in
operating, maintaining, and managing process safety systems have the
knowledge, skills, and experience necessary to identify and manage
potential hazards. This includes training programs, competency
assessments, and performance evaluations to ensure that personnel are
equipped to handle the risks associated with their roles. All these topics
are part of the management commitment.

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 Management commitment, on the other hand, involves demonstrating

leadership and commitment to process safety at all levels of the
organization. This includes establishing a safety culture that prioritizes risk
awareness, hazard identification, and effective communication, as well as
providing the necessary resources and support to ensure that process
safety systems are properly maintained and managed.

 Improving the efficiency of people barriers is a key goal for organizations

seeking to reduce the likelihood of incidents and accidents in industrial
settings. People barriers refer to the measures put in place to prevent
human error from causing accidents or incidents, such as training,
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procedures, and physical barriers. Improving the efficiency of these

barriers involves identifying weaknesses in the existing system and
implementing targeted improvements to address them.

 One approach to improving the efficiency of people barriers is to conduct a

thorough analysis of the organization's safety culture, including the
attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors of personnel. This analysis can identify
areas where additional training, communication, or leadership is needed to
reinforce the importance of safety and promote a culture of continuous
improvement.

 Another approach is to review and update procedures and physical

barriers to ensure that they are effective and up-to-date with the latest
best practices and regulatory requirements. This may involve conducting
risk assessments, reviewing incident reports, and engaging with personnel
to identify potential improvements.

 Ultimately, improving the efficiency of people barriers requires a

commitment to ongoing improvement and a willingness to invest in the
necessary resources, such as training, equipment, and personnel. By
improving the efficiency of people barriers, organizations can reduce the
likelihood of incidents and accidents, protect the health and safety of their
employees, and maintain a strong reputation for safety and reliability.

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Why Is It Important?
 Catastrophic process safety incidents are relatively rare, the losses
associated with the incidents can be devastating.
 Learning must be proactive, and lessons must not be forgotten. Business
seems to be changing at an ever-increasing rate.
 Acquisitions, divestitures, reorganizations, and resignations of key
individuals make it more difficult than ever to maintain competency simply
by relying on the knowledge in people’s heads. Simultaneously, the growth
in information technology enables businesses to efficiently control, expand,
and manage a storehouse of information and access this information from
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anywhere at any time. However, only competent people can transform

information into knowledge. knowledge management, not information
management, helps organizations understand and manage risk and remain
competitive.
Definitions
 Process safety competency can be defined as the knowledge and
experience to conduct a task safely, adequately, and efficiently. Developing
and maintaining process safety competency encompasses three
interrelated actions; continuously improving knowledge and competency,
ensuring that appropriate information is available to people who need it,
and consistently applying what has been learned. The competency element
focuses on organizational learning, as well as the components that
comprise an individual’s competence (knowledge, skill, and ability).
 Proficiency Level is the degree of expertise required for a specific subject
area, is defined by how much experience, knowledge, and skills someone
needs to maintain in order to meet one of the following definitions:
o Awareness is generally aware of the topic and associated terms. May
not know the answer but knows where to get more information.
o Basic Knowledge has general working knowledge of the topic. Has
basic training required to perform general tasks related to their role.
o Practitioner is that who can execute specific tasks within the topic
with minimal direction. Has the experience levels to complete
assigned tasks. Is typically an engineer or manager.

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o Expert is a recognized expert with extensive knowledge and skills.

Has specialized training or certification which may be required for
certain tasks.
o Leader Is responsible for implementation of a PSM element or
activity. Knowledgeable of the subject matter, may be a subject
matter expert, but that is not required. Coordinates all resources and
assigns tasks to ensure effective implementation of the topic.

Who Does It?

 In many cases, a single engineer or technical specialist is assigned to
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spearhead the efforts of a team charged with gathering and maintaining

the knowledge relevant to a particular technology or process. However, the
value of this information is limited unless it is put to use.
 Hence, the information must somehow be captured and applied
throughout the organization, often via collaborative projects and
improvement efforts involving corporate gurus, supervisors, process
engineers, operators, maintenance personnel, and facility management.
Where/when Is It Done?
 Developing and maintaining competency is done almost everywhere in an
organization. Organizational competency is enhanced wherever
observations and analysis collide to produce discovery, and it benefits from
the more mundane tasks of searching literature and attending technical
meetings.
 In high performing organizations, any time is appropriate for learning;
maintaining and improving organizational competency is a continuous
process.

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How is it done?
 Unlike some of the other RBPS elements, no simple answer exists as to
“how” competency is “done.”
 The single most important factor is a commitment by senior management
to support efforts to learn, and to share new information and insights
among units at a facility, with sister facilities within the company, and
potentially with other companies.
 Once the commitment is in place, opportunities to learn and interact with
others abound. Some information will have to be passed along through
mentorship and collaboration; both of these activities typically require
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active management support to ensure success.

 A closely related activity is succession planning, which is an intentional
activity that helps ensure that key positions are staffed with individuals
who possess specific knowledge and experience.

New Jersey Chemical Plant Fire (1935)

SUMMARY
 On April 21, 1935, a blender containing a mixture of sodium hydrosulfite,
aluminum powder, potassium carbonate and benzaldehyde exploded,
which led to a major fire at a specialized chemical plant in Lodi, New Jersey,
USA. Five employees were killed and many more were injured.
The investigation team identified the causes and contributing factors as :
 Inadequate risk analysis, and appropriate precautions.
 Inadequate operating procedures, and insufficient training of operators.
 The decision re-load the mixer was based on insufficient information.
 The mixer used was not suitable for chemical blending.
 There was insufficient communication between the plant and the designer
company of the chemical blending technology for the used materials.
 Training of fire members and emergency responders was insufficient.

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Key Principles

A. Maintain a Dependable Practice

 companies that aspire to a high degree of competency are successful in this
pursuit intentionally foster learning by establishing objectives and making
plans to achieve the objectives.
 that conditions are necessary for an organization to invest in process safety
competency:
1. A business case describes the expected benefits and the level of
resources that must be invested to achieve those benefits.
2. The organization inherently values technology and places particular
value on enhancing its process safety competency.
3. The organization believes that decisions should be based on knowledge
that is supported by facts, and any significant improvement in the body
of knowledge will lead to better decisions, thereby reducing risk and
improving performance.

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Establishing specific goals.

 Establishing specific goals that are jointly supported by the technical and
manufacturing organizations (and valued by the business) helps ensure that
the effort provides meaningful results.
Appoint a champion.
 Appointing a corporate-wide champion helps ensure consistent practice
and facilitate the exchange of information between facilities. so, this role
usually is assigned to a widely respected senior engineer.
Identify corollary benefits.
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 Efforts to better understand and manage risk will produce other more
tangible benefits. For example, the same loss of institutional knowledge
that can lead to a repeated process safety incident likely leads to even
more frequent losses associated with lower yield and output, higher
maintenance costs, increased quality defects and customer complaints.
 Closely linking efforts to maintain and enhance process safety knowledge
with efforts to maintain and enhance competency throughout the
organization should result in direct financial benefits.
Develop a learning plan.
 the learning plan is:
1. Incorporates the results of uncertainty cataloging, which is proactively
asking, “What else might we need to know and what benefit might this
information provide?”
2. Spells out assumptions about each uncertainty.
3. Presents approaches for testing each assumption and resolving each
critical uncertainty through experimentation and learning.
4. Prioritizes the assumption-testing tasks and defines a path for moving
forward as quickly and inexpensively as possible.
5. Serves as a log of efforts to maintain competency and a reference for
future learning plans.

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Promote a learning organization.

 Learning occurs by design and in pursuit of clearly defined needs. could be
identify in the following six characteristics of a learning organization:
1. Recognizes and accepts differences.
2. Provides timely feedback.
3. Stimulates new ideas.
4. Maintains an external focus.
5. Tolerates errors and mistakes.
6. Establishes and periodically updates the learning plan.
 It could be identified the five “learning disabilities” that are often
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encountered in organizations. Signs of any of these learning disabilities

should sound an alarm. They are:
1. Blind spots.
2. Filtering.
3. Lack of information sharing.
4. Flawed interpretation.
5. Inaction.

B. Execute Activities that Help Maintain and Enhance Process Safety

Competency
Appoint technology stewards.
 Appoint a person to be responsible for maintaining the collective
knowledge regarding each process, including process safety-related
knowledge. because one single person is unlikely to have the range of skills
necessary to address the different types of knowledge and experience
needed.
 Normally, this is a part-time assignment for a senior engineer or
technologist who has been closely involved with the process and its
technology for many years.

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Document knowledge.
 One means to sustain and share knowledge is to document information in a
technology manual.
 Documenting process-specific knowledge is increasingly important during
this era of divestitures, acquisitions, and other rapid transitions.
Ensure that information is accessible.
 every agency must have information posted on their internet sites and a
search engine can be used to locate relevant documents.
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Provide structure.
 Even if information is well communicated when it is developed or
discovered, the need for this information may not be immediate.
Push knowledge to appropriate personnel.
 Developing and maintaining a network of process safety professionals
provides a means to “push” new information throughout the corporation.
Apply knowledge.
 While efforts to stockpile useful information and promote learning should
be applauded, they hold little meaning without proper application.
Update information.
 Keeping information up to date can be even more difficult than providing
structure to facilitate searches.
Promote person-to-person contact.
 Workers must apply rules, skill, and knowledge to successfully execute their
daily activities. Rules can be read, and skills can be practiced, but
knowledge and understanding, which can be critical to recognizing hazards
and managing risk, normally requires interaction with subject matter
experts.

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Plan personnel transitions.

 Companies often face the need to maintain intellectual capital through
transition planning. This involves identifying critical positions within the
organization, particularly positions that require specific skills or experience.
Once these positions are identified, management proceeds to:
1. determine who in the organization may be able to replace the
incumbent upon retirement, resignation, or other transition.
2. train those who have been identified to fill the vacancy with as little
disruption as possible.
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Solicit knowledge from external sources.

 A single individual or single organization rarely has a monopoly on
knowledge or possesses all of the answers related to a particular operation.
Even if a facility has no direct counterpart, management systems and
approaches used to manage risk can be benchmarked against those of
other organizations, both within the company and within the industry.

C. Evaluate and Share Results

Evaluate the utility of existing efforts.
 Evaluate the benefits that are realized from various work activities that
make up the competency element, and periodically assess whether these
activities are:
1. meeting the objectives that were established.
2. providing other benefits that justify the resource demand.
Solicit needs from operating units.
 Work activities are often executed by process engineers or process safety
professionals who support a business unit, a number of facilities, or a
number of operating units at a large facility. Close alignment between the
competency element objectives and the operating units helps ensure
success of competency element work activities, and also helps strengthen
the relationship between process safety professionals and operating teams.

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D. Adjust Plans
Surveys on the usefulness of attending technical meetings.
 Periodically review the status of efforts to promote process safety
competency. With one eye looking toward what is currently working well
and the other focused on upcoming challenges, revise the plans to more
closely align the activities with the perceived needs.
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Suggested KPIs

Metrics (KPI’s) Interpretation

• Frequency with which incidents recur This metric is a direct measure of process safety
because the organization has allowed competency, but it may suffer from significant lag.
safeguards that were implemented as a
result of a previous incident to lapse.
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• Number (or %) of technology steward Unstaffed positions are an indication that the facility
positions that are currently staffed or business unit does not value maintaining process
safety competency.
• Staff-hours (per year) devoted by the This metric will indicate the level of effort devoted
technology steward to face-to-face to maintaining and enhancing process (and process
contact with operating units. safety) competency; a downward trend over time
may indicate a lapse in management support.
• Frequency with which incident This is a direct measure of process safety
investigation teams determine that the competency; however, because of the low
basic physical or chemical phenomenon frequency of process safety incidents (including near
that caused an incident was not known miss events), significant lag may exist between a
within the organization. decline in competency and a noticeable change in
this metric.
• Use of the technology manual (“hits” if A steady upward trend indicates that facilities find
it is implemented in a web-based the technology manual useful; conversely, a steady
fashion). downward trend may indicate that the information
is hard to locate, out of date, or otherwise not
relevant.
• Average response time for questions An upward trend in response time may indicate
posed to the technology steward or insufficient resources, with the potential for
center of excellence. complete failure of this system as a result of a loss in
interest at operating facilities and/or less than
adequate resources to maintain competency or
provide current and accurate information.
• Staff/hours (per year) devoted by the . A steady downward trend (or steep decline) may
technology steward to supporting indicate that facilities do not value this resource,
troubleshooting efforts for/with each that the resource is not effective, or that
operating unit management does not support efforts to spread
knowledge between facilities.

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• Number of questions posed to the A steady upward trend may indicate that facilities
center of excellence per unit time. find this to be an effective resource, or it may
indicate a loss of competence at operating facilities.
• Ratio of process changes to updates to A decrease in this metric may be an early warning
the technology manual that the information in the technology manual is not
being maintained current and accurate.
• Number of futilities or business units This metric is a direct measure of management’s
within the company that maintain up- commitment to maintaining competence in key
to-date succession plans. positions. Note that these plans are typically
updated periodically, rather than continuously, and
personnel can reasonably expect that the plan will
be updated as scheduled.
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• Pareto analysis of the topics discussed The fraction of questions that address a particular
with the technology steward or with subject should be considered when planning for
centers of excellence or researched future efforts to invest in competency and/or
using the technology manual (assuming developing the learning plan for future years.
it is web-based).
• Opinion surveys on how technical Surveys may provide a reliable and easy to execute
information is stored and the efficacy of method for evaluating the effectiveness of
searches. information storage and retrieval mechanisms
• Opinion surveys about the Although achieving consistency in polling is likely
organization’s competence, including difficult, particularly over time, a decline in the
opinions on the trend over time. organization’s perception of its competence should
be closely examined.

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Management Review - Suggested Topics

 Review the objectives that have been established for the competency
element.
 Review the learning plan to determine if it is helping to improve the
organization’s competency.
 Discuss “learning disabilities” and critically examine the organization’s
behavior pattern with regard to learning.
 Review conformance with plans to help promote organization learning and
competence.
 Review the benefits that can be attributed to efforts to expand the
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organization’s performance.
 Review the list of technology stewards. Query supported facilities to
determine if technology stewards are providing support as needed.
 Review a representative sample of technology manuals to determine if they
are (1) up to date, (2) accessible, and (3) user friendly.
 Review succession plans for key personnel, including:
1. The management team at each facility.
2. Technology stewards.
3. Key members of each center of excellence.
4. Process safety professionals and RBPS element owners.
5. Key technical staff.
 Review training and development plans for personnel who have been
identified as candidates for key positions.
 Examine the process for determining and maintaining the expertise
required to safely operate the facility.
 Discuss any known upcoming changes in key staff positions or senior
technical positions, and confirm that appropriate transition plans are in
place.

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