Process Safety Management (PSM) is concerned with the safe handling of products, safe
production of products and the safe operation of the process as confirmed by Thrower (2013).
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) (2012) promulgated the PSM
standard in 1992, which incorporated fourteen elements, to decrease the occurrence of process
safety incidents.
Walt and Frank (2007) described the cracks in the implementation of PSM programs, emanating
from major process safety incidents and compliance audits. This was confirmed by the decaying
process safety performance observed in recent years. It was thus proposed that an analysis into
the diverse process safety incident causes and its comparison against the implemented OSHA
PSM program, would suggest its associated shortcomings.
The aim of the study was to determine the most effective approach to implement and sustain
PSM in an organisation to prevent and manage the occurrence of major industrial catastrophes.
A semi-qualitative study was conducted through the employment of a survey questionnaire and
published incident investigation reports. A total of fifty random process safety incidents were
interpreted from published and accredited secondary literature. Most of the secondary literature
was obtained from the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) and Centre for Chemical Process
Safety (CCPS) databases.
From the study findings, Mechanical Integrity (MI) failures were found to significantly and
consistently contribute to process safety incidents. Further analysis specifically concluded that
equipment or control failure was the significant cause. Employee Participation (EP) was found
to statistically correlate with the other elements. The researcher found that literature agreed with the aforementioned findings and this study verified that the EP element was instrumental in the
implementation of the other elements.
The researcher used literature to confirm that safety culture and leadership commitment was
crucial to effective and sustainable PSM programs. The case study analysis validated this
observation. Therefore the most effective approach to implement and sustain PSM was to adopt
the DuPont, Centre for Chemical Process Safety (CCPS), Risk Based PSM framework or
Energy Institute (EI) models. To conclude, this study was effective as all the objectives and the
aim was achieved. / MIng (Development and Management Engineering), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2014
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:nwu/oai:dspace.nwu.ac.za:10394/11909 |
| Date | January 2014 |
| Creators | Naicker, Kreason |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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