Process safety differs from personal safety. An operation can have an excellent lost time injury record and be close to a major accident, because the controls that prevent loss of containment are different from those that prevent slips and falls. Organisations that measure only personal safety often miss degrading process safety performance entirely.

Barriers are the central concept. Between a hazard and a major accident sit a series of barriers: containment, detection, isolation, relief, shutdown, ignition control, mitigation and emergency response. Each has a defined function and a performance standard, and each degrades if not tested and maintained. Major accidents happen when several barriers are impaired at once, which is usually visible beforehand in overrides, deferred tests, temporary repairs and open action items.

Culture determines whether the system functions. Procedures that are written but not followed, permits issued without proper checks, alarms that are always active and overrides that become permanent all indicate a system operating on paper only. This course treats the technical controls and the human and organisational conditions as inseparable, because in practice they are.

By the end of this training, participants will be able to:

• Identify major hazards in production operations and their potential consequences.
• Distinguish process safety from personal safety and measure both appropriately.
• Apply barrier thinking and define safety critical elements and performance standards.
• Apply risk assessment methods including hazard identification and HAZOP.
• Apply layer of protection analysis and understand quantitative risk assessment.
• Operate permit to work, isolation and management of change systems.
• Manage simultaneous operations and override control.
• Apply process safety management system requirements and indicators.
• Plan and execute emergency response.
• Investigate incidents and apply environmental and regulatory compliance requirements.

Organisations sending participants to this training will:

• Reduce the risk of major accidents in production operations.
• Strengthen barrier management and safety critical element assurance.
• Improve permit, isolation and management of change practice.
• Improve emergency preparedness and response capability.
• Meet regulatory and process safety management requirements.

Participants will:

• Understand the major hazards in production and how they are controlled.
• Be able to apply barrier thinking and identify safety critical elements.
• Be able to take part in hazard identification and risk assessment.
• Understand permit, isolation and management of change requirements.
• Be able to recognise when a safety system is degrading.

• Production and operations engineers
• Operations supervisors and field staff
• HSE and process safety engineers
• Maintenance and integrity staff
• Facilities and process engineers
• Operations managers with accountability for safety

Upon successful completion of this training course, delegates will be awarded an official Certificate of Completion issued by the Petroleum Engineers Association (PEA), an ISO 9001:2015 certified training organization. The certificate carries 10 Credits and formally records the total learning hours completed.

Each certificate is signed by the Course Facilitator and the CEO of the Petroleum Engineers Association, and serves as verifiable proof of professional training that delegates can present to employers and professional bodies worldwide.