Integrating a Human Factors Approach into Process Safety Management Systems

摘要

So if we all agree that human factor's consideration is so important to our safety performance, why has it mostly been ignored during process safety management efforts of recent past? It is the author's opinion that this is the case because human factors can be both challenging and vague. It is challenging to address human factors since the topic involves consideration of issues outside of the normal scope of an engineer's background, such as management sciences, psychology and human behavior, ergonomics, and other areas. Addressing a wide array of issues is possibly labor intensive, and it is not easily compartmentalized into a succinct, and yet comprehensive single analysis. The PHA requirements of OSHA and EPA were identical in their requirements of human factors, and both regulations and agencies have been imprecise in their expectations. It is vague since it seems to be so pervasive, and most discussions on human factors describe a wide-ranging set of issues as part of the scope. Human factors covers issues from design to operation to management. Clearly there is room for improvement in reducing risks through more frequent and clever use of human factors methods. Simple, yet effective approaches are needed that can be well recognized, accepted and practiced by a wide spectrum of industrial companies. Three suggestions were made in this paper. Scrutiny of human factors in work procedures is another essential area to an effective PSM program. In some fashion, work procedures represent management risk tolerances, the desired path to safe work practices, process objectives, and hazards. A special effort is recommended to evaluate at least all critical work procedures for human factors issues. Inherent safety includes the consideration of more than just design features of a process. Inherent safety principles include human factors, in particular the opportunities for human error given the design and operating conditions and parameters. Finding situations likely to produce errors, such as controls being too difficult to access or too complicated, and working to reduce their clutter and confusion or to improve the accessibility are all examples of inherent safety in action. It is hoped that the adoption of improved consideration of human factors will improve overall plant safety. If accepted by management and implemented faithfully, it could lead to a reduction of the thousands of chemical incidents reported each year where the initiating event was some type of human error. These events lead to significant fatalities, injuries, property damage, business interruptions, and lawsuits, all of which could be significantly reduced.