Russ Davis is a Senior Consultant, Process Safety for Aon Risk Solutions. He is the author of several articles on Process Safety Management, has been published in CCPS Process Safety Progress and is a frequent contributor to the Aon Safety Matters newsletter.

On Thursday, March 24th Russ was a panelist in the Knovel sponsored webinar Optimizing Risk Management Systems and Safety Culture, now available on-demand. After the webinar we sat down with Russ to get his reactions.

K-Exchange: Can you tell us a little bit about your background and how you got involved in Safety and Process Safety Culture?
Russ Davis: I started in mechanical integrity and then migrated into full PSM program management.   Process safety is affected by two influences, equipment and people.  I have a strong background in equipment reliability so I’ve spent a lot of time, study and energy understanding the people side.  The safety of the process is controlled by people.  People are controlled by the culture within the organization.  I think understanding the culture of an organization is critical to the process safety program.

KX: In the first poll given during the webinar, 7% of respondents said they were attending as part of a reaction to a disaster that had already occurred. Is this what you had expected?
RD: Yes, primarily because process safety typically deals with low frequency high impact events.  While the number of catastrophic events is low we can see from recent events some of these accidents can have impacts that destroy companies. 

KX: Has process safety culture come a long way already?
RD: I think process safety culture is still in its infancy.  The industry as a whole are only just beginning to look at culture as a root cause of process accidents.  I’m not sure that there is a good understanding that process safety culture affects every element of a program.

KX: One thing you mentioned during the webinar was that process safety culture has to exist “from the board to the floor.” Why is it so important for all areas of the organization to buy into a safety culture?
RD: An organizational culture starts at the top.  If emphasis from the board room is on a safe, reliable process at each plant.  We can be assured that programs will be implemented to meet those expectations.  Where emphasis is placed by upper management is the major influence to the organizational culture.  When process safety near misses are reported to and analyzed by upper management the plant floor or rig floor will recognize what is important and a culture will form around that emphasis.

KX: Along the same lines, you also mentioned that, sometimes maintenance workers and supervisors don’t always see things the same way. How can an organization start to reconcile those differences?
RD: Communication is critical.  Each level of an organization needs to be informed of what the other levels are doing.  Knowledge is strength.  When the barriers and silos come down process reliability will go up.  Maintenance, operations, engineering and administration all have their specific jobs to do but the work of each of these groups is influenced by or has influence on the other groups.  If an organization wants to take advantage of the collective knowledge then barriers must be eliminated and communication between groups must flow naturally.  That is one of the reasons a survey is advantageous.  If we understand where there is lack of communication we can eliminate barriers.

KX: Finally, in the last poll of the webinar, 30% of respondents said that the next step for them would be getting more education about process safety, where would you direct them to get started?
RD: The Center for Chemical Process Safety (CCPS) has lots of very good reference books on process safety.  I think all of these books are available on Knovel.  Understanding the codes, or at least having a consultant who understands the codes and practices is critical.  Extracting oil and gas and processing the crude requires a high level of knowledge and study.  Making sure that the process is safe requires as much or more knowledge and study.  Find a good consultant.  It is very difficult for every organization to possess all the knowledge required.

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