The topic ‘Process Safety’ can be widely interpreted by different persons. It sounds to be related to the process industries only. However, there are various types of ‘safety’.
1. Safety of the person — preventing slips, trips, falls, cuts, impacts, etc.
2. General fire safety — ensuring that there are sufficient fire extinguishers, means of escape, means for sounding the alarm
3. Process safety — ensuring that the ‘process’ does not cause a risk to the individual or society.
The ‘process safety’ aspect includes process fire precautions: ensuring that the storage and handling of flammable materials does not create a situation where a fire starts and then the ‘general fire safety’ element has to be initiated.
Looking at it from this point of view, it does not matter whether the ‘process’ is a warehouse, or a large chemical complex. Process safety can be simply thought of as a way of ensuring, as far as reasonably practicable, that the factory operations do not affect the safety of the person/society.
How are goods delivered?
Where are they stored?
What are the properties of the material?
How are they moved about?
What happens to them in the ‘process’?
In other words, process safety can be thought of as the safe operation of the factory, from a perspective of the materials handled and processed, rather than from direct risks to the person/society.
