New Methodologies for Human Factors in Process Safety

Abstract Process Safety has been a major focus for the Oil and Gas and Petrochemical industries since the Flixborough disaster of 1974. Through the efforts of leaders in Safety there have been a number of key methodologies that has assisted Process Safety professionals in identifying “what went wrong” and how do we learn from disasters to prevent similar incidents from occurring again. Industry professional Dr. Trevor Kletz has gone as far as saying “Organisations have no Memory” Kletz (1993). However, over the last few decades, the industry seems to be making the same mistakes every few years. Research, insight and well-structured root cause analysis has highlighted that Human Factors and Organisational Culture is an area that must be considered in understanding Process Safety related incidents. Organisations such as the Centre for Chemical and Process Safety has included Human Factors as one of the elements in the Management System for Process Safety. System thinking and system dynamics has been identified a way of thinking about and analysing Process Safety related incidents to understand the Human Factor and its role in process related incidents.