Guest Post by Bill Pomfret (first posted on CERM ® RISK INSIGHTS – reposted here with permission)

Investigations of industrial accidents have found that a large number occurred during an interruption of production while an operator was trying to maintain or restart production. In each case the dangerous situation was created by a desire to save time and ease operations. In each case, the company’s safety rules were violated.

The best and most redundant safety layers can be defeated by poor or conflicting management practices. Numerous examples have been documented in the chemical industry. One accident in a polymer processing plant occurred after operations bypassed all alarms and interlocks to increase production by 5%. In another, interlocks and alarms failed—at a normal rate—but this was not known because management had decided to eliminate regular maintenance checks of the safety instrumentation.

Guest Post by Peter Holtmann (first posted on CERM ® RISK INSIGHTS – reposted here with permission)

This article is the tenth of fourteen parts to our risk management series. The series will be taking a look at the risk management guidelines under the ISO 31000 Standard to help you better understand them and how they relate to your own risk management activities. In doing so, we’ll be walking through the core aspects of the Standard and giving you practical guidance on how to implement it.