Process Safety - Avoiding Human Error

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The process industry has one of the best safety records of all the manufacturing sectors, but when something goes wrong, there can be devastating consequences affecting not just employees, but the public too.
With human error blamed for up to 80% of all accidents in the workplace, Dräger safety expert Kevin Honner, based in Blyth, Northumberland, talks about what can be done to mitigate risk.

By Kevin Honner, safety expert at Dräger

Every year, more than 200 people are killed and 180,000 injured in small-scale workplace accidents and while new technology has been invented to make our lives easier, it can in fact put lives at risk without the correct corporate culture, knowledge or training.

According to the UK Health and Safety Executive (HSE), human failures are responsible for up to 80% of all workplace accidents, therefore implementing a positive safety culture alongside technological innovations is a vital part of day-to-day operations.

The HSE has highlighted engineering competence as vital in process safety in its ‘Human Factors’ guidance and as such is committed to driving up standards across hazardous industries through its inspections and enforcement activities.

Although we can’t eliminate human error from the equation completely, more can be done to understand and control the issues that affect error. In terms of maintenance, identifying tasks most at risk from human error, need to be a part of every company’s safety management plan to avoid rising operational costs and also prevent a potential catastrophe.

A positive Process Safety culture

The term ‘safety culture’ was first introduced after the Chernobyl disaster in 1986 after a sequence of human errors during the testing of the nuclear power plant led to the accident which claimed 31 lives.

Facility operators, in violation of safety regulations, had switched off important control systems at the Ukrainian plant’s reactor, which allowed it to reach unstable conditions, according to a United Nations report. A power surge then led to a series of blasts which sent a cloud of radioactive dust billowing across Europe.

Human error has also been highlighted in a number of major cases, including the 2005 Buncefield oil depot blaze in Hertfordshire which engulfed more than 20 fuel storage tanks, injured 43 people and resulted in around 2,700 compensation claims – potentially worth hundreds of millions of pounds.

The Bhopal pesticide plant explosion which killed 2,000 people in 1984 is considered one of the worst industrial accidents in history. Although no one was convicted, there was evidence which suggested that workers were substantially negligent in the management of the plant.

Positive safety culture

For example, at Dräger we believe a positive safety culture is one where the importance of safety and confidence in preventative measures are experienced at all levels of an organisation. This includes leadership, a good line management system, and the involvement of all employees.

Without a positive safety culture in place, it can result in corner-cutting, poor safety monitoring and poor awareness of safety issues. Following all steps in maintenance tasks is cited as a major cause of nuclear power plant incidents, therefore a technician failing to replace nuts and bolts under time pressure can have catastrophic consequences.

Employers should consider training in the following areas to maximise the safety and productivity of their workforce: hazardous gases present onsite; calibration and maintenance; limitations of gas detection equipment and sensor technology; plus hands-on operation and instrument review.

For example a gas detection system is only as effective as the people who are responsible for using it and routine tasks such as calibration are vitally important to ensure the accuracy of a gas detector’s reading and thus the ability of the detector to provide an alarm at the correct concentration level. Calibration can also help by determining the condition of the sensor on the as detector.

Importance of training

As it is inevitable that errors will be made, improving management systems, providing extra training, changing working conditions and adapting the organisational culture all need to be looked at to slash the risk of such devastating incidents in the future.

At Dräger Safety UK, we are committed to working alongside our industry partners to pioneer safety solutions for the future. We don’t just provide a range of new technologies, as once they are installed in work environments it can challenge human perception systems and information can be misinterpreted.

Failures in decision-making and reasoning can have severe implications for complex systems such as chemical plants, and for tasks such as maintenance and planning. The focus of error management is placed on reducing the chance of these errors occurring and minimising the impact of those that do occur.

We emphasise the importance of the need to provide technical training courses for workers in operation, maintenance and the proper use of equipment to ensure they know exactly how to use tools and then seek feedback from our customers to find out how our technology is being used and what can be done to make things better for the future.

This not only gives the workforce greater protection, but also peace of mind and ultimately protects companies.

Factors such as training and competence assurance, management of fatigue-induced errors and control of workload can eliminate some errors, but those caused by human limitations are best reduced by looking at safety culture and system design. A good system should not allow people to make mistakes easily.

Changing behaviour

Opportunities for human error are existent in every task performed by anyone working within the process industry – it is inevitable, but also manageable. Identifying the root cause of the error is vital in order to reduce accidents an minimise the consequences of those that occur. It is best achieved by learning from errors, rather than by attributing blame.

In order to fully maximise the use of gas detection systems and the safety they provide, it is necessary for businesses to ensure that they are used by a team which has received the necessary training and education.

At Dräger, we have a holistic approach to safety. It’s important to us that a customer has innovative solutions to protect their workforce and the public, but we’re not just product-focussed.

We believe in feeding information from our customers that have been involved in human error incidents back into our design solutions. That way, we not only reduce the chance of future accidents, but by studying human error, it gives us a very important tool for preventing disaster.

Top tips for employers

It’s important to identify all hazards and risks in the workplace:

Training – train people so that they understand the risks and what to do about them. A lack of training can cause an essential element of control to be lost.

Competence – ensure staff involved with risk control tasks have the appropriate competence for those tasks. Failure to do these things leads to mistakes.

Priorities, attention and conflict resolution – get workers involved and communicate with them about their job and equipment design so that demand-capacity mismatches can be fixed.

Assurance – ensure standards and procedures get used. Sometimes, the organisation fails to update its own knowledge base.