At Hazardex Live, TÜV Rheinland's Principal Process Safety Consultant Graeme Laughland will highlight some key deficiencies found in the application and design of Management of Change (MoC) systems as discovered through incident case studies, auditing and gap analyses conducted on this topic.

The topic of Management of Change (MoC) continues to be a concern for the process industries line management. Of all the process safety management topics it is the most likely to keep people awake at night. Why, well because they are directly responsible for the changes made "on their watch". Incidents continue to occur as a result of the inadequacies in companies MoC systems or in the ineffective application of such systems. This is clearly illustrated by the incidents such as at BayerCrop Science and Williams Geismar as investigated by the USA’s Chemical Safety Board.  The topic of MoC was central to the disaster at Flixborough in 1974 and contributed to a significant number of fatalities at Texas City in 2005. What's stopping industry from preventing such disasters? Given the amount of change likely to occur related to the Energy Transition are more Major Accidents just waiting to happen? Are we planting seeds for future generations to reap? Could emerging technologies play a part in helping us become more efficient and effective in managing change?

For topics such as HAZOP and Safety Instrumented Systems there are international standards such as IEC 61882 and IEC 61511/61508. Industry has given a strong focus to implementing IEC 61511/61508, often influenced by the regulator. Whilst in many countries there are regulatory requirements covering the topic of management of change there is not a universally applied MoC standard within the process industries. Should we await the next industrial disaster to create such a standard or should we start making that change now? Conversely, should individual countries such as Canada lead the way in implementing new PSM standards? The Canadian Standards Association issued a PSM standard in February 2017. This paper highlights some key deficiencies found in the application and design of MoC systems as discovered through incident case studies, auditing and gap analyses conducted on this topic.

About the author:

Graeme Laughland is a Fellow of the Institution of Chemical Engineers and a Professional Process Safety Engineer with more than 37 years of practical experience in plant operations and process safety management. He has led over 300 hazard studies / PHAs (mainly HAZOP), conducted PSM audits and Deep Dive Assessments in Europe, USA, the Middle East and India and has run > 100 training courses on PSM, Hazard studies / PHAs, Process Safety Management Leadership, Management of Change, Human Factors, Process Safety Information and RAGAGEP, PSM Auditing, Process Safety Performance Indicators and Deep Dive Audits and Assessments. His consultancy experience covers oil, gas, chemicals, petrochemicals, power, pharmaceutical and bio-fuel industry sectors.