Integrity Cards

Know Your Onions

We’ve been commissioned to develop a set of cards based on the Initiating Events (IE) and Independent Protection Layers (IPL) from the AIChE – American Institute of Chemical Engineers CCPS LOPA Book (Layer of Protection Analysis: Simplified Process Risk Assessment) which has been industry best practice for over 20 years.

The following references have been operationalised & visualised to aid stakeholder understanding and recurrent engagement i.e. not just frontline personnel who interact with hazards & protection measures but also those who are responsible for their implementation, modification & oversight.

Initiating Events (Table 5.1)
Passive IPLs (Table 6.3)
Active IPLs (Table 6.4)
Human Action IPLS (Table 6.5)
Probability of Ignition (Figure 7.1)

Table 5.1 concludes with the following note:

Individual companies should choose their own values, consistent with the degree of conservatism of the company’s risk tolerance criteria. Failure rates can also be greatly affected by preventive maintenance (PM) routines

The LOPA ‘Onion’ represents a multitude of independent protection measures:

IEC 61511-1 Figure 9 – Typical protection layers and risk reduction means

This is illustrated as a series of prevention & mitigation bowtie barriers as follows:

The original CCPS LOPA Book (published in 2001) is now supplemented by Guidelines for Initiating Events and Independent Protection Layers in Layer of Protection Analysis:

For more information on all our cards & initiatives – please contact us.

All materials (physical cards/boxes and digital cards/platforms) can be customised to match your technical & local languages – please visit our Options page for more details.

If you’d like to subscribe to future updates, please submit your email address below – many thanks for your interest.

Coolbox Talks

The Toolbox Talk (or Tailgate Talk) is a well-known and commonly used activity to inform and engage workers (Employees & Contractors) to keep them alert to work-related hazards. They typically have the following attributes to refresh knowledge & exchange information between veterans & novices:

Focus on single aspect of Health & Safety.
Short in duration.
At or near the place of work (jobsite) in a comfortable location/setting.
Prior to commencement of an activity or shift.
Informal.

The best talks encourage participation, have group discussions and allow attendees to share their personal experience related to the topic of the talk – all with goal of creating and sustaining a positive safety culture.

Conversely, Toolbox/Tailgate talks can become ineffective (lose engagement) if/when they:

Lack focus or appeal:
- Irrelevant topics – not associated with forthcoming work
- Poor preparation – trainer not knowledgeable or briefed
- Not interesting – boring or forgettable
- Stale – lack of variety leads to complacency (“Been there, done that – let’s get this over with“)
Are badly scheduled:
- Too brief – not enough time to absorb
- Too long – lose interest
- Too early – forgotten before start work
- Too late – desperate to get on with work (or go home)
Use inappropriate language:
- Too technical – difficult to understand/remember
- Not local – multicultural/international teams who may not all speak English
Lack continuity or follow-up
- No supporting documents or materials to refer to.
- No checks/challenges to confirm awareness/adoption.

Our Integrity Cards are designed to facilitate (catalyse) conversations (both Toolbox/Tailgate Talks for frontline Stakeholders and Safety Meetings/Moments for Leaders & Duty Holders) by being:

Visual & Memorable
Accessible & Portable
Adaptable

We were very pleased to learn from Mr Jerson Wattie of The National Gas Company of Trinidad and Tobago (NGC) how his colleagues were interacting with prototype Process Safety Cards to inform & remind them of potential Loss of Containment (LoC) events:

These sessions were held informally and by all accounts were very well attended and received.

So … to complement your Toolbox Talks, maybe you should consider ‘Coolbox Talks^*‘ where the technical & time pressures of the workplace are removed/reduced and participants can absorb & retain knowledge in an informal yet informative environment.

^*You may know these are Coolers, Chilly Bins or even Esky’s – but you get the idea!

For more information on all our cards & initiatives – please contact us.

All materials (physical cards/boxes and digital cards/platforms) can be customised to match your technical & local languages – please visit our Options page for more details.

If you’d like to subscribe to future updates, please submit your email address below – many thanks for your interest.

Constructive Conversations

The Construction industry is infamous for its high casualty numbers. It is recognised as a high hazard industry with a wide range of activities involving building, alteration/repair and demolition.

Construction workers engage in many activities that may expose themselves to serious hazards with both acute (immediate) and chronic (long-term) effects.

The International Labour Organization (ILO) highlights the following statistics:

Construction is among the most hazardous industries. In economically advanced countries, construction workers are 3 to 4 times more likely to have a fatal accident at work than other workers. Many more suffer from ill-health and die from occupational diseases arising from accumulated exposure to hazardous substances. In less developed countries, the risks associated with construction work are 3 to 6 times greater. Work-related accidents and ill-health come at direct and indirect costs for businesses and societies, let alone the incommensurable suffering and loss that workers and their families bear.

It is not uncommon on mega-projects (or projects of any signfiicant size) to employ a diverse workforce with different:

Contractors & Countries (payments & conditions)
Culture & Complacency (attitude to risk)
Competence
Communication (language)

Construction Safety Cards are designed to provide a common ‘Visual Vocabulary‘ to enage (and keep engaged) international (and also local) workforces so that they are aware of Hazards, recognise Threats & respect Controls.

The decks include Performance Influencing Factors cards that can contribute to errors with potentially fatal consequences.

Click the icon below to access our Construction Safety page:

For more information on all our cards & initiatives – please contact us.

All materials (physical cards/boxes and digital cards/platforms) can be customised to match your technical & local languages – please visit our Options page for more details.

If you’d like to subscribe to future updates, please submit your email address below – many thanks for your interest.

Incidentally

We have now completed our 1st deck of Incidents Cards based on 52 famous (and less well known) Process Safety (Loss of Primary Containment) events researched, evaluated & summarised by Peter Marsh of XBP Refining.

These have been peer reviewed by members of the IChemE Safety & Loss Prevention Special Interest Group.

Their work is documented as a Lessons Learned Database which is free to download by clicking the image below:

_{Click to download Major Process Safety Incident vs Root Cause Map}

A 2nd deck is already in development which will visualise & operationalise the 100+ incidents investigated by the US Chemical Safety & Hazard Investigation Board.

_{Click to access the CSB Investigations}

Cards

Key aspects of each Incident are illustrated as shown below

These are described on the Incidents Cards page which can be accessed via the icon below:

Cards have a Top Trumps layout similar to the SDS cards and can be used (played) in a variety of ways e.g. discuss if/how this incident relates to our operations or simply who holds the most ‘severe’ card is either the winner or loser – the prize or forfeit to be decided by the team.

The Process Incidents cards use the following iconography:

Hazards

Industries

Contributing Factors

Using the Root Cause Map, Proximate (immediate) and/or Root Causes are indicated by up to 10 of the following Process Safety Management (PSM) elements (cards):

For more information on all our cards & initiatives – please contact us. All materials (physical cards/boxes and digital cards/platforms) can be customised to match your technical & local languages – please visit our Options page for more details.

If you’d like to subscribe to future updates, please submit your email address below – many thanks for your interest.

Don’t Gamble with Safety

Inspired by playing cards created by ICI and Esso, we designed our decks to be informal as well as informative, fun as well as functional to provide Users (‘Players’) with a familiar format to learn through gamification e.g. to play ‘conventional’ card games with their teammates or co-workers.

However, we recognise (and respect) that different Cultures, Countries & Companies have specific restrictions or prohibitions on gambling & gambling materials.

To increase & sustain the awareness of frontline personnel to potentially hazardous events within these organisations, we’ve removed all gaming references but retained the same iconography to provide a clear consistent visual language that can be utilised on cards, magnets or digital platforms.

For example (as shown below) cards can be produced (in different languages) to challenge Users to consider (identify) Threats (Causes) and Barriers (Controls) associated with each hazardous event. This provides a useful introduction to Bowties and enhanced scenario understanding.

If you’d like to subscribe to future updates, please submit your email address below – many thanks for your interest.

2022 Mary Kay O’Connor Safety & Risk Conference

We will be presenting “Process Safety Cards – Visualizing Knowledge & Operationalizing Wisdom” at the forthcoming Mary Kay O’Connor Safety & Risk Conference in College Station, TX .

This event, in association with the IChemE and C-RISE, has the tag line “Health to Human is Safety to System: Making Safety Second Nature” and we aim to show how cards can be used to embed & retain Safety (and Integrity) knowledge so that it can become second nature i.e. intuitive & instinctive.

If you’d like to subscribe to future updates, please submit your email address below – many thanks for your interest.

SLOPE

Simple Layer of Protection Exercise

The CCPS book “Layer of Protection Analysis: Simplified Process Risk Assessment” has been the definitive reference for performing Layer of Protection Analysis (LOPA) since it was published in 2001.

LOPA is a simplified form of risk assessment which typically uses order of magnitude categories for Initiating Event Frequency (IEF), Consequence severity, and the likelihood (probability) of failure of Independent Protection Layers (IPLs) or Conditional Modifiers (CMs) to approximate the risk of a scenario.

To help explain the principles to stakeholders (Operational and/or Management for example) who are less familiar with the concept, we’ve developed a simple card game or training exercise which can be played digitally (as shown in the video below) or physically with customised playing cards.

Click Watch on YouTube for Captions

The basic rules are relatively simple – the aim is to reduce the likelihood of a randomly selected hazardous event or scenario by assembling a collection of appropriate protection layers using order of magnitude frequencies & probabilities.

Up to 4 players can construct a Scenario (each are assigned a row).
Start by drawing (click to flip) from the Cause deck and place on the left-hand holder – this has a value according to the initiating event frequency (1 = Most frequent to 6 = Least frequent).
Draw a card from the Consequence deck and place on the 2nd from left holder – this has a value according to the tolerable/target event frequency (1 = Most tolerable to 6 = Least tolerable).
The aim is to create a Mitigated Event score to be equal to or less than the Target score. Subtract the Cause value from the Consequence value to get the gap which has to be closed by one or more Control cards
- e.g. a Cause (card) with a value of 1 which could lead to a Consequence (card) with a value of 4 requires a risk reduction of 3. This could be a single Control with a value of 3 or several controls whose values add up to 3 or more.
Draw a card from the Controls deck and place on the 3rd from left holder – this has a value according to the risk reduction it provides (1 = Least effective to 3 = Most effective).
Players take it in turn to draw from the Controls deck to create their scenario. Once you’ve drawn a Controls card, play moves on.
The winner is the first to close the gap (or better i.e. if they reduce the risk more than required).

Rules:

If a Controls card has a zero value e.g. inadequate human response or ignition control, then they have to put the card in the bin (they can’t develop their scenario until their next turn) and play passes to the next person.
If a Controls card is similar to the Cause e.g. both BPCS or both Human, then they have to put the card in the bin and play passes to the next person.
If a Controls card is similar to another Controls card in their scenario e.g. both pressure relief or ignition control or SIF, then they have to put the card in the bin and play passes to the next person.
If a Controls card is not an appropriate mitigation measure e.g. reduced occupancy for an Environmental or Financial consequence, then they have to put the card in the bin and play passes to the next person.

Formats:

Tables can be configured in a number of different ways (click on images to enlarge):

Bowtie

Threats (Causes) on the Left
Consequences on the Right
Barriers (Controls) in between

PHA (HAZOP)

Causes on the Left
Consequences next right
Safeguards (Controls) to the right

LOPA

Consequences on the Left
Causes next right
Protection Layers (Controls) to the right

Variations:

Players have to describe the cards they’ve deal e.g. give an example from their experience. If they cannot give an appropriate explanation, they cannot play that card and it goes into the bin stack.
Cards can be customised to suit corporate or industry types & values e.g.

In this prototype, examples from the CCPS LOPA book have been used to illustrate the principles. .

Causes

Causes are taken from Table 5.1 (Initiating Events):

Note that the following Causes are not frequencies:

Crane Load Drop (per lift)
LOTO Failure (per opportunity)
Trained, Unstressed, Not Fatigued Operator Failure (per opportunity)

For simplicity, the game should assume that these occur at 1 lift or opportunity per year.

Consequences

Consequences are illustrative only.

Controls

Controls are taken from Table 6.3 (Passive IPL), Table 6.4 (Active IPL), Table 6.5 (Human IPL) & Figure 7.1 (Ignition Controls).

Guidance

Cards and games are not intended to replace proper analysis conducted by competent & experienced personnel. For more guidance on the principles of Layer of Protection Analysis, please click on the images below:

Cards (and digital game boards) can be branded to suit and physical cards can be created in magnetic format to play in a workshop environment.

If you’d like to subscribe to future updates, please submit your email address below – many thanks for your interest.

Lessons Remembered

The recent tragedy at Aqaba Port is a constant reminder that we need to be vigilant to the potential Loss of Containment events that may have long lasting effects on or in the community. Life continues to move on for all of us, however those directly and indirectly affected by this incident will never forget.

Industries have a long established culture of sharing Lessons Learned, however that learning may be static, stale or transient whereas what we really need is not just Learning, but Remembering (at or before the point/time of use/need) followed by appropriate Corrective & Preventive Action.

Potential

Safety Data Sheet (SDS) cards highlight the hazards associated with the assets & activities.

Problems

Loss of Containment (LoC) cards highlight how the integrity of equipment & transfer systems can be compromised or breached.

Process Safety (Containment Integrity) Card

Cards can be enhanced with QR Codes which direct the User/Player to more detailed information:

Click QR Code for sample information on Dropped Objects

Protection

Scenarios (in Bowtie format) visualise how Loss of Containment or Control can be prevented with an emphasis of Degradation Factors to highlight how barriers can be compromised:

The Consequences (Effects) fo the Loss of Control/Containment will depend on the materials handled (hazards & inventory) and the conditions (pressure & temperature) under which they are processed or stored. The right hand side of the bowtie is therefore asset/activity specific.

Predicaments

Incidents Cards summarise WHAT, WHEN, WHERE & WHO to provide accessible, portable & memorable tools to inform Novices and remind Veterans that they must be vigilant, not complacent – it can and might just happen to you and/or your colleagues:

QR codes on the cards direct the User/Player to more detailed information on the incident e.g. WHY:

Click QR Code for sample information on Aqaba Port

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Managing the Safety of Processes

Our Process Safety Management (PSM) cards have been updated to represent a full set of human characters to act as a reminder that we need people to execute the processes and procedures within PSM frameworks. Cards are organised into the following topics:

Organisation

Analysis & Implementation

Operation & Maintenance

Excursions & Modifications

The PSM manual has been developed with the invaluable assistance of Ian Travers who has developed an online Process Safety Audit tool:

_{click icon for information on the Audit tool}

The virtual manual is available on YouTube via the link below:

For more information on all our cards & initiatives – please contact us.

If you’d like to subscribe to future updates, please submit your email address below – many thanks for your interest.

Magnetic Attraction

To help embed and retain your key asset & activity integrity values, we’ve developed card size magnets that can be attached to a variety of metal surfaces.

Magnets provide the same opportunity to Visualize Knowledge and Operationalize Wisdom as our cards, however these weather-resistant designs offer both fixed and portable ways to inform and remind stakeholders in an accessible and memorable way.