About


About Anatomy of an Incident 

Process safety is a top concern affecting process operators and process safety engineering worldwide. Not only to achieve compliance with local and international regulations, but more importantly, to avoid risk in the production process. Learning from process safety incidents and accidents is key in implementing effective risk reduction mechanism and safer manufacturing processes and Anatomy of an Incident is dedicated to sharing public process safety information and analysis.

Overall, the industry has learned lessons from incidents, and has made improvements on a global basis. However, we still need to do a better job of learning from proactive and positive results such as the best practices built into international standards. There are industries and companies who have embraced the identification and reporting of real and meaningful indicators, and can also demonstrate performance improvement. Many are already delivering substantial bottom-line benefits.  

Anatomy of an Incident strives to assist in an even bigger achievement-- safer and more reliable operations. The purpose of this site is to allow you to learn from other peoples’ experiences—those situations where something went wrong in a real-life plant environment. We want to get past the dramatic parts of the discussion and see what we can extract from the wreckage that might help you prevent the same thing happening.

Working with ABB, the site sponsor, we will examine actual incidents and fill in all the details we can:

  • How the process worked and where the situation fit into the larger picture;
  • How the incident unfolded from start to finish;
  • Digging to the root cause and adding contributing elements;
  • What specific safety standards applied to the situation and how they were implemented;
  • What the company should have done; and
  • Ideas that you can take away.

Each incident will have a place for you to offer comments, ask questions, and maybe start an ongoing discussion with your peers. The important thing is to provide the means to a better environment in you plant so that everyone goes home safely at the end of the shift.

About our Sponsor: Safety is a core value in ABB, and its importance is stressed at all its levels; from the corporate office to all delivery centers in the world. Over the past 35 years, ABB has successfully designed and installed safety systems in more than 55 countries worldwide. With operations on all continents and dedicated safety engineering teams around the world, ABB provides not only highly-qualified technical resources during project delivery, but also ensures competent local support and service during the operation and maintenance phase of the asset lifecycle. We work hard with end-users to maintain and evolve existing installations, thereby maximizing customer value over the lifecycle of the asset and ensuring safe plant operation. http://new.abb.com/process-automation