Process safety management

Process safety management (PSM) is a practice to manage business operations critical to process safety. It can be implemented using the established OSHA scheme^[1] or others made available by the EPA,^[2] AIChE's Center for Chemical Process Safety,^[3] or the Energy Institute.^[4]

PSM schemes are organized in 'elements'. Different schemes are based on different lists of elements. This is a typical list of elements that may be reconciled with most established PSM schemes:

• Commit to process safety
  • Process safety culture
  • Compliance with standards
  • Process safety competency
  • Workforce involvement
  • Stakeholder outreach
• Understand hazards and risks
  • Process knowledge and documentation management
  • Hazard identification and risk analysis
• Manage risk
  • Operating procedures
  • Safe work practices (e.g. a permit-to-work system)
  • Asset integrity management
  • Contractor management
  • Training and performance assurance
  • Management of change
  • Operational readiness
  • Conduct of operations
  • Emergency management
• Learn from experience
  • Incident investigation
  • Process safety metrics and performance measurement
  • Auditing
  • Management review and continuous improvement