BSEE Safety Alert No. 480: Keeping Process Safety Information Up to Date
BSEE Safety Alert No. 480
Various government agencies, including the United States Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE), issue incident reports that provide valuable safety insights. However, the findings and recommendations of the reports tend to be too specific ― they could often provide more general insights to do with the management of process safety. An example of this concern is today’s BSEE Safety Alert, Safety Alert No. 480: Fingerboard Locking Bolt Failure Leads to Near Miss Incident.
The specifics of this event are indeed very specific, and will not provide much guidance to those not working drilling rigs offshore. (Although it appears as if the recent event in which a door plug flew off an airplane may have been to do with improperly secured bolts. So there may be some overlap between two very different industries.)
However, all process safety programs incorporate an information management element. The offshore Safety and Environmental Management Systems (SEMS) has the category ‘Safety and Environmental Information’. That element of the regulation includes the following sentence.
The management program should require that a compilation of safety and environmental information be developed and maintained for any facility subject to this recommended practice.
< my emphasis >
It is difficult to collect, compile and validate the enormous amount of information needed to manage process safety. It is even more difficult to keep that information up to date. And it is yet more difficult to find new information that can improve safety. Yet that is the fundamental lesson provided by this Safety Alert.
