Safety Moment #66: The Most Important PSM Elements — Participation

Process Safety Management (PSM) programs are typically organized into a set of management elements. The structure provided by OSHA almost 30 years ago is shown below. (Since then other organizations have developed new systems based on experience, but they all tend to be dialects of the same language.)

1. Employee Participation
2. Process Safety Information
3. Process Hazards Analysis
4. Operating Procedures
5. Training
6. Contractors
7. Prestartup Safety Review
8. Mechanical Integrity
9. Hot Work
10. Management of Change
11. Incident Investigation
12. Emergency Planning and Response
13. Compliance Audits
14. Trade Secrets

Each of these elements is important, and they all interact with one another to create a complete system. However, three of them have been highlighted because they are particularly important.

This week’s Safety Moment, Safety Moment #66: The Most Important PSM Elements — Participation, explains why the first of these highlighted elements — Employee Participation — is so important. The Safety Moment stresses that this element is called Employee Participation, not Employee Communication. Nor is it called ‘Culture’.

In future Safety Moments we will consider why Process Hazards Analysis and Management of Change have been placed in the “most important” category.