Representatives of Britain’s high hazard industries, regulators and the unions have published for the first time a set of principles for ‘process safety leadership’. We have found them a useful tool in ensuring that organisations have top-level engagement in dealing with significant risks to people and the environment.

The 8 principles are:

• Clear and positive process safety leadership is at the core of managing a major hazard business and is vital to ensure that risks are effectively managed;
• Process safety leadership requires board level involvement and competence. For companies with boards located outside the UK then the responsibility to show this leadership rests with the most senior UK managers;
• Good process safety management does not happen by chance and requires constant active engagement;
• Board level visibility and promotion of process safety leadership is essential to set a positive safety culture throughout the organisation;
• Engagement of the workforce is needed in the promotion and achievement of good process safety management;
• Monitoring process safety performance based on both leading and lagging indicators is central to ensuring business risks are being effectively managed;
• Publication of process safety performance information provides important public assurance about the management of risks by an organisation; and
• Sharing best practice across industry sectors, and learning and implementing lessons from relevant incidents in other organisations, are important to maintain the currency of corporate knowledge and competence.

If you are working within a high hazard industry these principles may well help you to prioritise the areas that need attention and from this you can develop a structured plan for safety management within your organisation.

OMS are leading specialists in Health and Safety support and advice, and can work with you to develop both strategic and practical safety frameworks to incorporate all of the above. For more information please contact us on: 0845 1300616 or email us at: info@oms.uk.com.

Posted by Allison Peasgood – Director