Process safety is the engineering discipline for preventing major accidents from the process itself: releases, fires, explosions, and runaway reactions. It is broader than functional safety and adjacent to occupational safety. Day-to-day work includes HAZOP and LOPA facilitation, mechanical integrity programs, management of change, and Process Hazard Analysis (PHA) revalidation, typically led by chemical, mechanical, electrical, or controls engineers with relevant process experience.
We at SIL Safe treat process safety as the larger umbrella, with functional safety (IEC 61511 and IEC 61508) sitting inside it as the standards-based engineering discipline for instrumented protective functions. Occupational safety is a separate but adjacent discipline, with different training and different credentials, and conflating it with process safety is one of the most expensive mistakes a facility can make. We wrote a full article on the difference, Functional Safety Is Not the Same as Occupational Safety.
Key Points
- Engineering discipline for preventing major process accidents (releases, fires, explosions, runaway reactions); broader than functional safety and distinct from occupational safety.
- Day-to-day work centers on HAZOP and LOPA facilitation, mechanical integrity, management of change, and PHA revalidation; practitioners typically come from chemical, mechanical, electrical, or controls engineering backgrounds.
- Credentials include the Certified Process Safety Professional (CCPSC) from CCPS, IChemE professional registration, and often a Professional Engineer license (PE, P.Eng, CEng) in a relevant engineering field.
Example
A facility with an industry-leading Total Recordable Incident Rate (TRIR) is not necessarily a healthy process safety facility. The Baker Panel report after Texas City documented exactly that pattern at BP, and Buncefield and Jaipur followed the same shape: strong personal-injury metrics, neglected process safety. Process safety health is measured by leading indicators tied to PSM and Risk-Based Process Safety (RBPS) elements, such as MOC backlog, PHA action items overdue, proof-test completion rate, and SIF demand rate.
See Also: occupational safety, PSM, HRA
Cited Sources