Case Studies
In process safety, knowledge is as integral to workplace protection as equipment. The right knowledge, in fact, can make a significant difference in the safety of worksite personnel and members of the public in the event of a hazardous incident.
As process safety professionals, we have industry experience and expert insights to provide organizations and facilities with potentially life-saving knowledge. Over the years, we have contributed to over 20 books and guidelines for the Center of Chemical Process Safety (CCPS) CCPS, either as a committee member or as the lead contracted author. Through these efforts, we’ve helped increase industrywide awareness of key practices, strategies, and procedures.
Here, we’ll explore the role the BakerRisk team has played in the development of the broader CCPS publication library and the process we use to create practically useful texts for industry partners.
The CCPS is a global organization that provides guidance and process safety strategies for the chemical, petroleum, and pharmaceutical industries. A not-for-profit organization, the CCPS is focused on making these industries safer for everyone involved, including worksite employees and the general public.
Many organizations and companies are a part of the CCPS. Some members, such as BakerRisk, go above and beyond to actively contribute to CCPS process safety materials, books, and other resources.
Under the leadership of the Technical Steering Committee (TSC), new CCPS safety publications are produced each year, in addition to the monthly CCPS Process Safety Beacon and the quarterly Process Safety Progress journal publications. Some of BakerRisk’s team members work closely with these groups as committee members, contributing their knowledge and insights.
The CCPS library contains hundreds of published books and guides, which are available to both member and non-member companies. These process safety guides can help transfer knowledge across organizations, as well as close process safety gaps between industry partners. By sharing knowledge in this way, everyone becomes a little safer.
All CCPS books are written exclusively by experts in relevant industries, ensuring technical accuracy and practical application of their insights and advice. CCPS publications are always peer-reviewed as well, ensuring applicability to modern-day challenges and risks.
BakerRisk’s staff is well-equipped to contribute to CCPS publications due to our industry expertise and our longstanding partnership with the organization. Since 1991, our staff members have contributed to and participated in CCPS and GCPS technical conferences, as well as served on the TSC and several CCPS project committees.
We’re trusted community members in this sector, and we’ve been the authors of over a dozen guideline book projects. For many books we didn’t directly author, we lent our expertise as technical committee members or as technical peer reviewers. These efforts have helped the CCPS’s collection of process safety publications grow to encompass hundreds of volumes.
Our goal has always been to improve industrywide process safety performance by offering our knowledge and experience to organizations and facility managers. It’s one of the most concrete ways we can contribute to a safer industry and world overall.
When we’re contracted to create an informative, helpful, and practically useful process safety guidelines book, we have several responsibilities, including:
Typically, our team takes 12 to 18 months to complete a process safety book. This includes all the major steps, starting from being awarded a book contract to finalizing our part of the publication process. Though the CCPS provides a small sum to help finance this work, BakerRisk subsidizes a substantial portion of the cost to create each publication to give back to the process safety community.H2: Examples of CCPS Publications with BakerRisk Contributions
Over the years, BakerRisk was hired by CCPS to work with the project committee to write the book as the principal author(s), including but not limited to:
Let’s look at two specific examples of CCPS books that our staff wrote themselves or with the assistance of other process safety professionals.
The purpose of this book is to provide practical guidelines to aid investigators as they analyze process safety incidents at work sites. During the outline stage, our experts determined that while many process safety investigators utilized proprietary root cause analysis tools and techniques such as the “5 Whys” method, few were able to regularly identify the real root causes of hazard incidents.
Furthermore, the BakerRisk team knew that many commonly used incident analysis techniques fail to identify or eliminate multiple hypotheses/scenarios before beginning root cause analysis. In the worst-case scenarios, this can cause confirmation bias, leading investigators to collect only evidence that proves or supplements their pre-existing beliefs.
The correct approach is the rigorous use of the scientific method (which is also the legal standard for safety incident investigations) followed by a systematic analytical process to determine the true root causes for safety incidents. In Guidelines for Investigating Process Safety Incidents, 3rd Edition, BakerRisk’s team outlined and explained proper incident investigation techniques and procedures with this framework.
In this publication, BakerRisk contributed to an overview and breakdown of key guidelines related to the evaluation of process plant buildings at risk for certain hazards, such as explosions and fires. Specifically, our team dug into API standards like APR 752, 753, and 756, which explore how plants can meet OSHA expectations for facility siting.
Rather than giving readers a step-by-step process of how to perform siting analyses for OSHA standard compliance, this CCPS book instead provides key information and references for facility managers to utilize as needed. It also covers the fundamentals of the risks of fire, explosive, and toxic hazards, explaining them through illustrated examples.
In this way, it is an excellent example of the practical value CCPS publications can provide to facilities.
Ultimately, BakerRisk’s ongoing contributions to CCPS publications are a reflection of our commitment to meaningfully contribute to the process safety community and help CCPS achieve its mission: a world without process safety incidents. As industry leaders in this sector, it’s our duty and privilege to lend our expertise to such critical topics. We hope to continue helping facilities and their workers remain safe by writing more books in the future, contributing to conferences, and expanding the industry’s understanding of process safety.
In previous articles in this series, BakerRisk discussed the hydrogen economy and high-level hazards. Additionally, best practices and general guidance for performing a PHA on hydrogen processing facilities to accurately assess all the risks and consequences associated with hydrogen were also covered. This article will focus on the materials and potential damage mechanisms and hazards associated with the operation of equipment exposed to hydrogen, including pressure vessels, pipelines, piping, and other equipment handling hydrogen.
Hydrogen has been used in petroleum refining, fertilizer production, chemical synthesis and many more applications for centuries. Throughout hydrogen’s use, releases have resulted in numerous explosion and fire incidents. Hydrogen is becoming more prevalent as a low carbon energy solution since it can be used both as an energy carrier as well as a replacement for raw materials. As hydrogen is adopted across more industries and applications, continued emphasis on preventing release and escalation is essential.
On March 16, 2016, after filling a gas supply tank, the researcher attempted to reconnect it to the bioreactor. When the researcher turned on the pressure gauge, the supply tank exploded causing severe injuries to a researcher, destroyed equipment, and damaged adjacent labs and hallways.
On November 5, 2005, at a waste treatment facility located in Rhadereistedt, Germany, a release of H₂S resulted in four fatalities, including a truck driver, operator, and two additional personnel attempting to rescue those directly impacted.
Read how BakerRisk helped a cogen facility by developing structures built to mitigate explosion and toxic risks, all done within an ideal timeline.
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