Effective management of process safety is a significant concern for the industry. In the current business environment, failure to manage process risks can have severe consequences. Developing solutions is simple, but implementing them is far more challenging.

DNV's world-class expertise in technical risk evaluation, asset integrity management and management system development makes us a natural partner for addressing process safety risks.

We work with clients in every area of the process industry. This broad exposure enables us to continually improve our knowledge, tools and methodologies. DNV is able to draw on this expertise to address the specific needs of each client when developing and implementing improvements to process safety management systems.

Managing complexity
By its nature, process safety impacts the entire range of business activity in a large refining and petrochemical organisation. As a result, implementing process safety management is a complex affair. Awareness of the key interfaces between management functions is critical in ensuring that risk controls are managed coherently.

Consequently, flexible framework models and interface mapping are useful for identifying linkages, then reinforcing and ensuring an effective flow of information across them. The performance of process safety management activities is assessed against standards that incorporate communication and behavioural expectations.

Building capability
Typically, new skills are required to improve process safety management in organisations. These largely relate to the technical management of process risk controls. Although some of this expertise is usually outsourced, developing in-house capability is essential for supporting strategic and operational decision making.

Demonstrating performance
The measurement of process safety performance requires a two-pronged approach:

• Assessing the effectiveness of the management system
• Measuring its implementation, through the performance of on-site risk management controls.

DNV has distilled its broad expertise into creating the isrs7 PSM Omega tool, which assesses process safety in the context of the entire business management system. This is linked to a Physical Barrier Assessment (PBA) that evaluates the adequacy of hardware controls. The result is a performance
comparison against industry best practice, benchmarking against peers and a clear map of the route to improvement.