Water process safety: you don’t improve what you don’t measure

Photo source: Anglian Water

Virtually every Water Company has safety as its top priority. The water industry has made significant steps forward since the days of the Camelford incident reducing the likelihood of such incidents happening in the future. 

But as the Prime Minister recently said: “Good health and safety is vitally important. But all too often good, straightforward legislation designed to protect people from major hazards has been extended inappropriately to cover every walk of life, no matter how low risk”.

One of the keys to improving safety is measurement. Here the water industry can learn from the chemical industry – an industry that has been at the forefront of developing process safety management. Many organizations that want to improve process safety struggle with defining the right metrics. All too often the emphasis is on lagging indications like accident rates. The chemical industry has lead the way in recognizing that to be pro active on safety its essential to also have some leading indicators.

From a number of discussions with experts in this field, it is clear that there are sometimes differing views on exactly what should be measured and there is acceptance that, in some cases, the measures need to be site and process specific. One thing which is universally agreed, however, is that leading indicators are highly valuable to give an early warning that things could go wrong.

For those new to this subject, the guide from Center for Chemical Process Safety, 'Process Safety - You Don't Improve What You Don't Measure' , is an excellent starting point. Click here for link