The PSM Report: Welcome
Update May 12, 2020
The COVID-19 pandemic has turned the world upside down. How this will affect industrial safety, and process safety in particular, remains to be seen. The series is written on the assumption that the current pandemic is so severe and so sudden that we cannot go back to the ‘Old Normal’. All aspects of our lives, including the way in which we manage safety, will change.
Of course, none of us know what the future holds. We are still in the middle of this pandemic; it is still growing and there seems to be no end in sight. Still, now is the time to consider what the future may hold and what opportunities may present themselves.
Only a crisis – actual or perceived – produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes the politically inevitable.
Milton Friedman
The posts in this ‘New Normal’ series try to generate ideas that are either ‘lying around’ or that will be ‘lying around’ for others to pick up and use as they see fit.
At the time of writing, the following is a list of posts in this series.
- The New PSM Normal (1) — Deflation
- The New PSM Normal (2) — Do Less With More
- The New PSM Normal (3) — Peak Oil
- The New PSM Normal (4) — Automation
March 2015
Welcome to the PSM Report — where the letters PSM stand for ‘Process Safety Management’. We post information, news and opinions to do with the management of safety in the process industries, including chemical plants, oil refineries, pipelines and offshore oil and gas.
Much of the material at this site is based on the following books:
