Development of the ATOS concept, analysis of technical and organisational safety (original) (raw)

Risk analysis method integrating both technical and organisational factors

Safety Management Systems (SMS) are now required in a lot of establishments handling hazardous substances in Europe in application of the council directive 96/82/EC of 9th December 1996 on the control of major-accident hazards involving dangerous substances, known as SEVESO 2 Directive. The Human Factors play obviously an important part in the effectiveness of those safety management systems. Indeed the system depends on the involvement of the people in charge of applying it. Considering the Human Factors from this angle leads the risk analyst to look at the organisation also through its social aspect. The question raised becomes therefore how the relationships, the power plays between workers, the cultural influences can interact with the intended prevention goals of the SMS. The idea would be to allow the risk analyst to foresee the creation mechanisms of the organisational shortcomings at the origin of the major accident. In this paper the author describes the development of a ri...

From the traditional concept of safety management to safety integrated with quality

Journal of Safety Research, 2002

This editorial reviews the evolution of the concepts of safety and quality that have been used in the traditional workplace. The traditional programs of safety are explored showing strengths and weaknesses. The concept of quality management is also viewed. Safety management and quality management principles, stages, and measurement are highlighted. The concepts of quality and safety guarantee are assessed. Total Quality Management concepts are reviewed and applied to safety quality. Total safety management principles are discussed. Finally, an analysis of the relationship between quality and safety from data collected from a company in Spain is presented.

Perspectives of the new safety

Revista Brasileira de Saúde Ocupacional, 2022

Cook and Woods 1 , in a seminal article, point ways to overcome the notion of 'human error' as an explanation to industrial incidents and their investigations. In the nine steps the authors proposed, analyses should (1) seek 'second stories' to explain events b , (2) protect themselves from experts' hindsight bias, (3) know operators' work, (4) seek 'systemic vulnerabilities', (5) unveil the production of safety by practice, (6) search for factors distal to the event, (7) examine how macro-determinants produce new vulnerabilities, (8) use technologies to support and favor operators' performance, and (9) control the complexity of systems by new forms of feedback. These authors' conception of safety is not inherent to the design and operation of production systems, i.e., not only assured by technological choices, equipment maintenance, strict compliance to procedures, and the control of operators' behavior. In the case of complex systems, interrelations between several functions and process variables can lead systems to an operating state with which operators are unfamiliar. Thus, certain circumstances normalize the occurrence of possible incidents which operation teams fail to detect.

Reducing unknown risk: The safety engineers’ new horizon

Journal of Loss Prevention in The Process Industries, 2020

A significant gap exists between accident scenarios as foreseen by company safety management systems and actual scenarios observed in major accidents. The mere fact that this gap exists is pointing at flawed risk assessments, is leaving hazards unmitigated, threatening worker safety, putting the environment at risk and endangering company continuity. This scoping review gathers perspectives reported in scientific literature about how to address these problems. Safety managers and regulators, attempting to reduce and eventually close this gap, not only encounter the pitfalls of poor safety studies, but also the acceptance of 'unknown risk' as a phenomenon, companies being numbed by inadequate process safety indicators, unsettled debates between paradigms on improving process safety, and inflexible recording systems in a dynamic industrial environment. The immediacy of the stagnating long term downward major accident rate trend in the Netherlands underlines the need to address these pitfalls. A method to identify and systematically reduce unknown risks is proposed. The main conclusion is that safety management can never be ready with hazard identification and risk assessment.

Broad (multilevel) safety research and strategy. A sociological study

Studying safety from a broad (or multilevel) perspective in daily operations is a challenging prospect. The aim of this article, with the help of a case study, is to contribute to its development. In the introduction, broad (multilevel) safety research is introduced. This introduction indicates main authors who have produced in the past thirty to forty years a strong background against which one can build an idea of this challenge. It requires to decipher in real life situations the interactions between technology, task, structure, culture, strategy and environment of high-risk systems. An additional interest is, following the insights gained from the literature, to investigate the importance of strategic decision making in such broad (multilevel) safety approach. A first section discusses methodological issues linked to ethnographic research, and presents the methodology followed. The second section provides a narrative of the case study which combines a historical view of the plant, a description of some of the salient problems of working practices in a production department, an explanation of these problems through an organisational and managerial perspective, a description of the complex patterns of interactions between people in the plant and a strategic analysis of the situation. The last section discusses the interest of a broad (multilevel) research agenda explicitly incorporating the importance, influence and centrality of powerful decision makers, without simplifying the complexity of this issue.

Safety management – A multi-level control problem

Safety Science, 2013

Safety management is a crucial activity in maintaining acceptable safety levels of large hazardous industrial facilities. Risk analysis and safety engineering are two important activities of safety management by which safe designs of such facilities can be achieved. A continued safety during the operation of the facilities relies furthermore on successful and efficient experience feedback and management of change. Activities in safety management build on a control metaphor by which control loops built into the technical, peoples and organisational systems ensure safety of the facilities. In this paper we take a closer look on concepts of control theory to investigate their relationships with safety management. A conclusion of the paper is that the control metaphor provides useful insights in suggesting requirements to be placed on safety management. The paper draws on experience from the Vattenfall Safety Management Institute (SMI), which started its operation in 2006.

MIRIAM : an integrated approach to organise major risks control in hazardous chemical establishments

In the field of risk prevention, research is often divided or partial. Research work-achieved or in progress-focuses on topics like technical risk assessment, organisation management or human factor : ergonomics, sociology, etc. But little work is dedicated to an integration of all these disciplines into a same methodology. It is yet obvious that an effective control of major accident risks depends on the ability of an organisation to consider and integrate every aspect of prevention. A separate control of either human factor, or safety technical barriers, or safety management is of course necessary, but does not guarantee a sufficient prevention level on its own. Effective prevention requires the control of every means available. From this statement, INERIS has started developing an original integrated method to control major accident risks of hazardous establishments under the scope of Seveso II directive. The method is currently tested with voluntary French SEVESO II establishments.

Reducing unknown risk : the safety engineers\u2019 new horizon

2020

A significant gap exists between accident scenarios as foreseen by company safety management systems and actual scenarios observed in major accidents. The mere fact that this gap exists is pointing at flawed risk assessments, is leaving hazards unmitigated, threatening worker safety, putting the environment at risk and endangering company continuity. This scoping review gathers perspectives reported in scientific literature about how to address these problems. Safety managers and regulators, attempting to reduce and eventually close this gap, not only encounter the pitfalls of poor safety studies, but also the acceptance of 'unknown risk' as a phenomenon, companies being numbed by inadequate process safety indicators, unsettled debates between paradigms on improving process safety, and inflexible recording systems in a dynamic industrial environment. The immediacy of the stagnating long term downward major accident rate trend in the Netherlands underlines the need to address these pitfalls. A method to identify and systematically reduce unknown risks is proposed. The main conclusion is that safety management can never be ready with hazard identification and risk assessment.