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Organizational Process Safety

Enhanced process safety management with a new approach to Risk-Based Process Safety (RBPS)

High hazard industries have long invested in process safety management systems, and, as consumers and the public increasingly scrutinize the safety practices of companies of all sorts and sizes, interest in Process Safety (PS) has grown.

However, conventional PS management, often compliance-oriented and dictated by regulatory bodies such as OSHA in the US or directives like Seveso in the UK, has not prevented disasters from happening. Traditional audits, while appropriate for evaluating a program against a given standard, fail to address organizations’ capability and culture, both of which substantially impact process safety outcomes.

Organizational Process Safety (OPS) is our answer to the call for innovative solutions to persistent process safety challenges and a more effective process safety management system. Drawing on decades of experience with partners in the oil and gas, pharmaceutical and chemical sectors, our experts have designed a ground-breaking approach to risk-based process safety that incorporates organizational culture and capability as well as human factors, based on the CCPS (Center for Chemical Process Safety) risk-based process safety model. Our tool examines the critical areas identified by the CCPS, generating repeatable and reproducible results, customized recommendations and plans for improvement. Applicable to any industry striving for safety excellence, OPS not only addresses compliance, it goes beyond what existing process safety systems can offer to bring industries closer to zero harm.

Your Benefits

An objective, precise, repeatable and reproducible measure of the maturity level of your site or organization.
Optimal interventions to improve your organization’s maturity level, and benchmarking indicators to monitor this progress.
The ability to conduct meaningful benchmarking across sites and geographical areas, with an assessment tool that has all the features of a reliable metric.
An expert assessment of both the capabilities and culture underpinning your organization’s risk management program carried out efficiently with your resources and personnel.
A roadmap to optimizing process safety management in your organization.

Our Approach

We structure our Organizational Process Safety (OPS) service around Risk-Based Process Safety (RBPS), a continuous improvement method that involves a cycle of assessment, implementation and monitoring. OPS is our distinct, evolved approach to Process Safety Management (PSM). Our OPS tool specifically addresses an organization’s capabilities and culture. Its methodology goes a step further to minimize subjectivity by being:

Scalable: Effective for any industry, for single or multiple facilities and for one or more workstream components
Practical: Conducted mainly with workers in the workplace
Precise, repeatable and reproducible: Accurate, consistent results across sites and assessment teams

Our targeted assessment tool measures and evaluates with precision an organization’s maturity in terms of managing process safety risk to show whether your site has an avoidance, compliance or values-driven culture. The assessment results are derived from a combination of cultural elements and capabilities and show exactly where your organization stands regarding the maturity level of risk management: From viewing safety as a hinderance to managing risk with an established, robust system within a healthy safety culture that is sensitive to future changes. Based on these results our specialists provide practical recommendations to help you reach your safety goals and establish the Process Safety Management System that is right for you.

True to our values and role as trusted advisors, we listen carefully to our clients to ensure that our approach is adapted to their needs. A general outline of the process follows:

Discussion: Together we meet to determine the scope of the service, identifying which areas of the organization are under analysis and which workstreams are to be assessed.
Targeted assessment: Specialists familiar with your technology perform assessments that determine the PS maturity level within each identified workstream; each receives a benchmark score for future monitoring.
Prioritization and recommendations: Assessment results are prioritized so that weaker areas are addressed more urgently than relatively strong ones; interventions are proposed that promote maturity progress.
Implementation support (optional): Specialists are available on request at this stage to assist with the implementation of interventions.
Reassessment: Within 5 years, an organization can request a follow-up assessment to measure progress and redirect efforts

Why DEKRA?

We are experts in both the technical and organizational factors that impact safety.
We have impeccable credentials as a trusted partner to a cross-section of industries and on a global scale.
We specialize in process safety management and innovations, such as our Organizational Process Safety tool.