Procedure Development and Enhancement

Written procedures are required for many activities in a process such as operations and maintenance. Many companies assume their employees can write procedures simply by documenting what they do. However, this approach often produces ineffective procedures.

There are much better approaches that can be used to write procedures that do not require any more work than the traditional “write what you do” approach. These better methods produce procedures that are much more effective and usable. Procedures that are properly written, documented, and followed help to ensure that the knowledge required to safely operate processes and equipment is made available to the appropriate operating and maintenance personnel, management, emergency response and preparedness teams, safety personnel and others. Procedures can have as much impact on process safety as the process equipment. Procedures are best developed with the active participation of those who will use them. Information provided by procedure users on the actions required must be cast into a format that helps ensure usability. Use of guidelines for drafting, evaluating and validating procedures is important. They should address the appropriate use of language, numerical information, graphics, lists and tables and the proper formulation of special types of procedural steps such as non-sequential, continuous and time-dependent.

Details

Services Offered

• Needs assessment.  We help clients decide when and where procedures are needed. 
• Development of new procedures.
• Re-formatting and enhancement of existing procedures.

We design and develop procedures according to established principles and best practices to ensure they are written for their users. We provide the procedures in an appropriate format.

 We revise existing procedures to meet current standards. Process Risk provides the revised procedures in an appropriate, customized format. We also advise clients on procedure maintenance, control and training.

Other Information

Written procedures are required by OSHA’s Process Safety Management (PSM) standard. The Operating Procedures element of the PSM standard is one of the most frequently cited elements by OSHA year-after-year and therefore deserves special attention to ensure compliance. Good engineering practices place a heavy emphasis on having comprehensive, up-to-date procedures and training the employees who use them. Indeed, the development and use of effective and user-friendly operating and maintenance procedures in process facilities is essential for safe and efficient operations.