Our White Papers

eLearning and Learning Management Systems (LMS) were taken to new heights in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic as training shifted online across the globe. This shift altered how industries viewed risk and hazard management and posed new challenges for training and compliance.

Chemical processing facilities need reliable emergency response plans and systems (ERPS) in order to manage technological risks to plant personnel, the surrounding communities, and the environment.

The handling, use, processing and storage of hazardous materials will always present risk. The goal of process safety management is to consistently reduce risk to a level that can be tolerated by all concerned - by facility staff, company management, surrounding communities, the public at large, and industry and governmental agencies.

This paper describes a method for identification of major acute risks in existing process facilities that have potential for serious impacts to on-site and offsite populations, and for prioritization of mitigating measures.

This paper provides concise and structured documentation to be used as a “guideline” when conducting Hazard & Operability (HAZOP) studies. It collects and summarizes key tables, figures, and checklists placed in chronological order according to the sequential phases that define the HAZOP Management System (HMS).

Although most companies that handle hazardous materials have implemented process safety management systems, they are still having accidents.

This manuscript explains the fire phenomena and introduces the different types of industrial fires that should be identified and characterized during the development of a risk-based quantitative assessment; i.e., flash fires, pool fires, jet fires and fireballs.

It’s a new era for safety culture. Gone are the days of perceiving culture as a static, top-down pyramid where training is considered a check-off-the-box to-do that transforms performance into being “safer” after a single dose of learning. Peak safety competence doesn’t happen overnight, like magic; it’s cultivated.

Regarding vessels and tubes containing combustible gases or dusts, it is important to acquire knowledge on the conditions under which a fuel and oxidizer could undergo explosive reactions. These conditions are strongly dependent on the pressure and temperature.

Many companies who are regulated by current Good Manufacturing Practices (or cGMP) are discovering that they are also required to comply with process safety management regulations such as PSM in the U.S. or Seveso or COMAH in Europe. And chemical and petrochemical companies who have been regulated for years under PSM are now starting to produce pharmaceutical products that are regulated under cGMP.

Online learning, commonly referred to as eLearning, is uniquely primed to train and deepen individual and organizational competency more efficiently than traditional training methods. The COVID-19 pandemic created a surge in organizations adopting online learning to substitute for traditional, in-classroom training.

An effective management of change (MOC) process simply prevents accidents. In fact, several process industry incident investigations have identified a weakness in the MOC process as the root cause, including two case histories published in a 2001 safety bulletin issued by the United States Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB).

Runaway reactions leading to catastrophic events continue to occur in multipurpose equipment. Examples of causes that can lead to such catastrophic events include but are not limited to: (a) failure to identify and quantify runaway reactions hazards, (b) undersized pressure relief systems for unintended chemical reactions, (c) improper equipment selection and design, (d) cooling systems that are susceptible to single point failure, (e) process knowledge management, (f) management of organizational change and succession planning, and (g) deficient process safety information.

SuperChems™ introduces better tools for managing chemicals and chemicals databanks. These new tools enable the user to quickly select new databanks and/or create project specific databanks that can be included with the project file for complete portability. These new tools automatically update the chemicals mixtures and warn the user if there are potential mismatches or missing chemicals with databank selection. Databanks are no longer required when sharing project files that have embedded project specific databanks.

Companies can have a process safety incident while performing construction, high risk or non routine maintenance activities at their facilities, and the results can be devastating in terms of safety to the workers and public, the environment and the surrounding communities.