Recognizing Catastrophic Incident Warning Signs in the Process Industries [Hardcover]

This book provides guidance on characterizing, recognizing, and responding to warning signs to help avoid process incidents and injuries before they occur. The guidance can be used by both process safety management (PSM) professionals in evaluating their processes and PSM systems as well as for operators who are often the frontline defense against process incidents. Warning signs may consist of process deviations or upsets, instrumentation warnings or alarms, past operating history and incidents, observable problems such as corrosion or unusual odors, audit results indicating procedures are not being followed, or a number of other indicators. Filled with photos and practical tips, this book will turn anyone in a process plant into a hazard lookout and will help prevent potential incidents before they turn into catastrophic events.List of Tables xix

List of Figures xxi

Files on the Web Accompanying This Book xxii

Acknowledgements xxv

Foreword xxvii

Preface xxix

1. Introduction 1

1.1 Process safety management 3

1.2 Normalization of deviance 4

1.3 A strategy for response 5

1.4 Maintaining organizational memory and a healthy sense of vulnerability 7

1.5 Risk based process safety 8

1.6 Our target audience 11

1.7 How to use this book 12

1.8 Case study – Toxic gas release in India 13

2. Incident Mechanics 17

2.1 Incidents do not just happen 17

2.2 Incident models 17

2.3 Case study – Benzene plant explosion in China 27

3. Leadership and Culture 29

3.1 How does leadership affect culture? 29

3.2 The leadership and cullÃ*