Process Safety Performance Indicators for the Refining and Petrochemical Industries

Developed by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI), and co-published by the American Petroleum Institute (API), ANSI/API 754 details performance indicators for process safety in the refining and petrochemical industries. Used to help drive performance improvement in all processes in the industry, these leading and lagging indicators are divided into four tiers; Tier 1 represents the most lagging, and appropriate for public reporting, while Tier 4 represents the most leading and is intended for internal consideration.  A leading indicator typically signals future events, while a lagging indicator is one that is identified following a particular event.

Impact

The Texas City Refinery explosion in Texas in 2005 killed more than 15 people and injured more than 170 others. As a result of this event, and the subsequent recommendations that came from the United States Chemical Safety and Hazard Identification Board (CSB), the ANSI/API 754 was developed. While developed specifically for the refining and petrochemical industries, the ANSI/API 754 can be applied to any industry where a loss of containment or similar incident poses a significant threat to the environment, personnel or the surrounding community. A loss of containment refers to any harmful substance which is ‘released’ accidentally and may pose a threat, and is a typical side effect of incidents in process industries. While API 754 deals specifically with performance indicators for process industries, it is applicable outside of facilities covered by OSHA PSM and similar international standards.

Challenge

Responding to catastrophic events can easily justify the implementation of an overall risk management strategy, but the most difficult part of any risk management system is predicting events before they occur. By looking carefully at all components of a process-related industry, and examining the lagging indicators, an organization can better predict leading indicators and future unwanted events. Risk management often occurs in silos, particularly in complex organizations with multiple systems and processes. Management needs to have a comprehensive view of everything going on in an organization in order to have better visibility into all potential risk and make better decisions regarding that risk. In the refining and petrochemical industries, an overall risk register that highlights leading and lagging indicators is crucial – with this information, management is better able to predict future risk, prioritize the most critical risks, and prevent those risks from becoming reality.

The Dyadem Solution

Dyadem can assist organizations in the refining and petrochemical industries implement a risk management strategy that follows the recommendations of the ANSI/API 754 guidelines. By following the established performance indicators as outlined in the guideline, and adopting an integrated risk management risk strategy, organizations are better equipped to deal with potential risk and prevent catastrophic events like the Texas City explosion from occurring.

Dyadem’s Stature enterprise software covers all aspects of an integrated risk management system, enabling companies to identify, analyze, mitigate and monitor process risks across the organization. Stature offers an integrated lifecycle model that can help organizations ensure that all parts of the process and product are safe and secure, and minimize impact to personnel, the environment and surrounding community. Stature captures the risk information, aggregates the most critical items, including leading and lagging indicators and provides visual information in the form of dashboards and reports that can be used to make critical business decisions. Stature can provide you with a central risk register that has all significant risks captured across risk assessments, regardless of where the risk was identified. Automatically produced from completed risk assessments, the risk register allows information from different perspectives and risk thresholds to be collected, scored, and reported against. With this sort of information at hand, organizations in the process industry are better able to predict and control potential risks, ensuring safety of the company, its people, and its surroundings.