So what is a competence management system? The Process Safety Leadership Group defines it as: “A combination of practical and thinking skills, experience and knowledge. It means the ability to undertake responsibilities and to perform activities to a recognised standard on a regular basis.”
In plain old English, this simply means introducing arrangements to control a cycle of activities within your organisation. The end result? A system which assures and develops competent performance.
Do high hazard sites need to be competent?
In short, yes they do. This is particularly the case given that the Health and Safety Executive has grabbed the issue by the scruff of the neck. As the HSE embarks on its review of Competency Management Systems with a focus on high hazard sites, we must analyse our ability to demonstrate and continually develop Competency.
Companies must ensure:
They retain technical competence when outsourcing work
The competence of staff for safety critical operations or tasks
They continually evaluate competency levels
And let us not just get caught up in the red tape of the law. After all, good competency systems also:
Support regulatory compliance
Reduce incidents
Avoid working days lost and potential litigation
Enhance profitability by getting things right proactively rather than reactively
ITC Oil and Gas Operational Safety, accredited by NEBOSH, is the most important Oil and Gas Health and Safety qualification you could have on your CV. With a strong focus on EU Health and Safety standards and management structure, the advantage is that you will have the skills to be able to manage Health and Safety issues home and away. The importance of process safety management in oil and gas remains a core matter throughout this qualification.
The NEBOSH ITC in Oil and Gas Operational Safety covers 3 topics:
Safety and environmental management in industry
Hydrocarbon process safety
Fire protection and emergency response
These learning objectives command a great foundational set of skills and knowledge in Health and Safety for managers, supervisors and staff within the Oil and Gas industry. Although there is no formal requirement to enrol on the NEBOSH ITC, it is recommended that students have an underpinning knowledge of safety issues in the oil and gas industry, or may be currently working in the industry.
How is the ITC Oil and Gas course delivered?
The course is ran over 5 consecutive days. Students have the choice to undertake the qualification with us at CATCH, Stallingborough, or for it to be delivered at their place of work by our talented Health and Safety tutors. One full day of the 5 days is a structured revision day focused on the NEBOSH ITC in Oil and Gas Operational Safety. If chosen to be taught at our premises, lunch and refreshments are supplied throughout the duration of the course.
Located in Stallingborough, North East Lincolnshire, CATCH is an industry-led training facility specialised in the process, energy, engineering and renewable industries. CATCH has impressive training facilities that include simulated environments, engineering workshops, bunded tank farm, and more.
The Tank Storage Association (TSA) has been the face of the UK’s bulk liquid storage providers for almost 40 years and during that time, the TSA has worked hard to ensure the industry’s voice is heard across political, regulatory and commercial channels. Representing 23 companies that have over 300 terminals in the UK, plus international relations, the TSA says that regularly listening and reviewing members’ opinions is a vital aspect to growth.
TSA executive director, Peter Davidson, sees growth, both in terms of member numbers and activities, as an important part of the association’s future.
“Organisations represented by the TSA represent a vital part of the logistical supply chain,” Mr Davidson said. “We realise that the more groups we have on board the louder our voice and the more influence we can have. Our growth is also an opportunity for our associate members [to get] more involved in our work.”
It is the TSA’s aim to provide clear advocacy on behalf of companies in the bulk liquid industry from political and regulatory view points.
The NEBOSH Health and Safety National General Certificate is the most popular Health and Safety course in the UK with over 175K people having gained the qualification. This favoured Health and Safety qualification covers main legal requirements for Health and Safety in the UK. This includes the identification and control of workplace hazards, and the practical application of knowledge. Besides the evergreen National General Certificate, Reynolds Training Services provide a range of NEBOSH Health and Safety courses for all sectors. Custom Training Courses
Why study NEBOSH National General Certificate In Occupational Safety with RTS?
The great thing about Reynolds Training Services, is that we offer students an opportunity to undertake NEBOSH accredited Health and Safety qualifications at the high hazard specialised training facility, CATCH. CATCH boasts impressive £12 million facilities including a live three storey process plant with control room, bunded tank farm, process simulator, Skills Enhancement Centre, access zone, CompEx zone and confined space entry zone as well as engineering workshops and classrooms. CATCH offers industry authentic training and assessment without the risks associated with processing hazardous materials.
What makes Reynolds Training Services the leading provider of NEBOSH Health and Safety education?
Our Health and Safety instructors have years of profound industry experience and knowledge
Pass rates are above the national average
Hosted at CATCH, an impressive £12 million high hazard industry training facility
Courses are made fun and enjoyable with refreshments supplied throughout
We are one of the UK’s leading health and safety training course providers
A process safety system is part art, part science. It’s a mixture of system skills and engineering for the prevention of catastrophic accidents such as fires, and toxic releases from explosions.
Recent disasters such as 2005 Buncefield in the UK and BP’s Texas City refinery in the US illustrates the importance of good process safety management.
Process safety is universal. It sounds like it’s a practice for only large organisation, but it can be adapted to small systems too.
The four corners of process safety:
Leadership
Risk identification and assessment;
Risk management
Review and improvement.
Safety practitioners will note that the pillars correlate to the more common systems models: plan, do, check, act, or POPIMAR (policy, organisation, planning, implementation, monitor and review).
The first stage of the process safety approach is to understand the hazards we want to avoid. Having identified the hazard, the next step is to describe the control measures such as offering engineering solutions.
Once identified a control measure, you can use leading and lagging indicators to measure its effectiveness.
Leading indicators:
Completion of maintenance tasks
Completion of operational tasks
Number and competency of responsible persons supporting the safety process
Quality of the risk assessment and written scheme.
Lagging indicators:
High measurement of the element you wish to prevent/control
Complaints about workplace environment
Once the controls are mapped, along with the activities to ensure they are maintained, the next challenge is to ensure it is a priority for leaders, so that they influence the organisation and make sure any shortfalls are corrected.
This mechanism is lacking in many organisations. Process safety tools cannot ensure leadership commitment, but by tabulating the controls and the performance of them the reduction in barriers can be documented.
Reporting is an important ingredient in the safety process. Reports need to make the gaps in control visible, with increasing urgency the more gaps there are. The reports provide a notification and foundation on how employees can react to ensure process safety is the best it can be.
Reynolds Training Services offer a range of Process Safety Management from level 2 to level 5 diploma in the practice of process safety management. See our courses here
Based at CATCH, Stallingborough (North East Lincolnshire), you can undertake the NEBOSH National General Certificate in Occupational Safety with us. Many delegates and businesses travel from Hull, Lincoln, Grimsby and Cleethorpes to study the popular course.
Why do individuals choose to study the NEBOSH National General Certificate with RTS?
CATCH is a specialised training facility that offers simulated environments that replicate real workplace hazards. Reynolds Training Services ensures classroom learning is fun and an enjoyable experience because we believe in making learning Health and Safety something you don’t have to dread.
Top reasons to choose RTS:
– Actionable, involved learning
– Get taught at the £12 million Health and Safety specialised training facility, CATCH
– Our pass rates are higher than the national average
– Refreshments supplied throughout of the course
– Brilliant and talented Health and Safety tutors that come from industry backgrounds
Occupational Health and Safety training is delivered by Reynolds Training Services at CATCH, Stallingborough. Reynolds Training Services are a leading provider of Occupational Health and Safety education in the Lincolnshire region. The Occupational Health and Safety qualifications we offer are designed for companies and individuals in all sectors that want to gain knowledge and skills about workplace health and safety.
Study NEBOSH and IOSH accredited Occupational Health and Safety qualifications with Reynolds Training Services.
We also offer a range of our own bespoke occupational health and safety qualifications and bespoke development, we take the approach that accidents can be prevented before they happen. Get compliance, get competency, get occupational health and safety training: Custom Training Courses
We are based at the fantastic training facility, CATCH Stallingborough, North East Lincolnshire, which is easily accessed via the M180 from Grimsby, Cleethorpes, Hull and Lincoln. Many students travel from Grimsby, Cleethorpes, Hull, Lincoln and wider Lincolnshire to study our NEBOSH and IOSH Occupational Health and Safety training courses.
Why study Occupational Health and Safety with Reynolds Training Services?
The great thing about Reynolds Training Services, is that we offer students an opportunity to undertake IOSH and NEBOSH accredited Occupational Health and Safety qualifications at CATCH. CATCH boasts impressive £12 million facilities including a live three storey process plant with control room, bunded tank farm, process simulator, Skills Enhancement Centre, access zone, CompEx zone and confined space entry zone as well as engineering workshops and classrooms. CATCH offers industry authentic training and assessment without the risks associated with processing hazardous materials.
The NEBOSH National General Certificate in Occupational Safety is the bread and butter to a better understanding and compliance of workplace Health and Safety. With over 170,000 people in the UK having gained the NEBOSH National General Certificate in Occupational Safety, it is no-doubt one of the most effective Health and Safety qualifications to have on your CV.
The National General Certificate provides fantastic knowledge and skills for Health and Safety. It is designed for everyone: managers, supervisors and staff with Health and Safety responsibilities will find the NGC beneficial. The broad Health and Safety issues addressed in this course means it is not just for the high hazard sector, but for all types of organisations. The certificate teaches delegates and businesses how to identify and manage risks effectively.
The qualification is taught and assessed in two parts: NGC1 & NGC2 which can be undertaken over 4 consecutive days, at your place of work or with us, at CATCH, Stallingborough.
Reynolds Training Services are based at CATCH, Stallingborough (North East Lincolnshire), which is easily accessed from wider Lincolnshire. Many delegates and businesses travel from Hull, Lincoln, Grimsby and Cleethorpes to study the popular NEBOSH National General Certificate with us.
Why study National General Certificate in Occupational Safety with RTS?
CATCH is the perfect venue to get a feel for Occupational Health and Safety knowledge. The venue offers simulated environments to replicate real Health and Safety issues in the workplace. Our classroom teaching is fun, hands on, and involved; meaning your brain won’t be fried with endless hours of powerpoint presentations. We believe in making Health and Safety learning something that you don’t have to dread.
Reynolds Training Services are a leading provider of NEBOSH Health and Safety training.
What makes us one of the best, you wonder?
– Actionable, involved learning
– Get taught at the £12 million Health and Safety specialised training facility, CATCH
– Our pass rates are higher than the national average
– Refreshments supplied throughout of the course
– Brilliant and talented Health and Safety tutors that come from industry backgrounds
The nature versus nurture debate is as old as the human race. It’s one that permeates all facets of life, both personal and professional.
Take the high hazard sector. In line with this thinking, it’s pertinent to ask:
Can accidents really be prevented?
Or are they an unfortunate eventuality?
In reality, the debate is one of nature versus nurture. Or, at a technical regulatory level, process versus personal safety.
Is error a natural part of human activity?
Let’s face it, nobody is perfect – so can this rule be applied to human error?
Humans are not programmed robots, so logic tells us that we are naturally prone to a lack of compliance and routine. Usually, this is a result of inadequate implementation of procedure, a lack of communication, or a misunderstanding of the practical application towards safety systems.
“For a long time, people were saying that most accidents were due to human error and this is true in a sense but it’s not very helpful. It’s a bit like saying that falls are due to gravity.”
– Dr. Trevor Kletz
Dr Kletz’s statement suggests both human activity and process are to blame if an accident arises. If you had perfect human activity, but process systems were lacking, soon enough you would be heading for danger. And the same goes for vice versa.
James Reason’s swiss cheese model highlights holes (failures) in protection at managerial level, which inevitably allows accidents to slip through them, resulting in an accident caused by human error. On the other hand, Sidney Dekker, a professor of safety, has tried to persuade organisations to move away from seeing human error as a fault of the individual to a symptom of problems in an organisation.
Regardless to say, the conflicting ideas provide evidence that it’s important to make sure that human activity and process need to be viewed as equally as important to ultimately reduce risk.
How can we Nurture control error in human activity?
Human factors expert, Jens Rasmussen, theories there are 3 categories of errors. In order to be identified and controlled, they require different approaches:
Training reduces skill-based errors
Checklists improve the use of rules, to combat rule-based errors
Understanding of the system reduces the likelihood of knowledge-based faults
Equip employees with sound training and implement a rigorous safety management system to control the chance of error by human activity.
How can we Nurture the process systems to be compliant?
The identification of unsafe construction/design and hazardous arrangements could prevent system-based accidents.
But, of course, human activity plays an important role: employees need to be proactive and have attention to detail. This comes from employees being passionate and happy where they work.
Motivate employees to be the best version of themselves. Offer rewards and recognition when they do good things. This is key to making sure process systems are always safe.
So, what do you think? Should error be put on trial? Leave your thoughts in the comment section below.
The US Chemical Safety Board has published a case study, ‘Key Lessons for Preventing Inadvertent Mixing During Chemical Unloading Operations’, which examines the events surrounding the October 21st 2016, chlorine gas release from the MGPI Processing Plant in Atchison, Kansas.
Around 140 people were sent to hospitals as a result of the poisonous cloud, which also forced residents to remain indoors or temporarily evacuate the city. The US CSB’s report outlines a raft of safety recommendations and measures companies should adopt to protect against similar incidents happening in the future.
US CSB chairperson, Vanessa Allen Sutherland, described the delivery and handling of hazardous chemicals as “high risk operations” which “require strict adherence to safety protocols”.
“An inadvertent mixture can result in a chemical reaction with extremely dangerous consequences,” she said. “ Our findings reaffirm the need for facilities to pay careful attention to the design and operation of chemical transfer equipment to prevent similar events.”
‘Human factors’
The MGPI facility produces distilled spirits and specialty wheat proteins and starches. The chemical release occurred when sulfuric acid was inadvertently unloaded from a tanker truck into a fixed sodium hypochlorite tank at the plant. The two materials combined to produce chlorine gas and other by-products.
The CSB’s final report includes 11 key lessons and outlines clear safety improvements that can be implemented at similar facilities across the country. Among these facilities should evaluate chemical unloading equipment and processes, and implement safeguards to reduce the likelihood of an incident, while taking into account human factor issues that could impact how facility operators and drivers interact with equipment.
Facility management should evaluate their chemical transfer equipment and processes and, where feasible, install alarms and interlocks in the process control system that can shut down the transfer of chemicals in an emergency.
View the full US CSB case study
Watch: ‘Mixed Connection, Toxic Result’
As part of its report, the US CSB released animated simulation video, “Mixed Connection, Toxic Result,” highlighting the safety lessons.
More about the US CSB
The CSB is an independent federal agency charged with investigating serious chemical incidents. The agency’s board members are appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate. CSB investigations look into all aspects of chemical incidents, including physical causes such as equipment failure as well as inadequacies in regulations, industry standards, and safety management systems.
