Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining us for another episode of the Hydrocarbon Engineering Podcast.

I'm your host, Callum O'Reilly.

And in today's episode, I speak to Lara Sweatt, vice president of technical and safety programs at American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers.

Our discussion revolves around one of Lara's core focus areas, process safety in the downstream sector.

We'll learn a little about why the sector continues to improve in terms of process safety and the role that AFPM has played in facilitating positive change.

I hope you enjoy.

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From managing vapor drive and mitigating corrosion risk to maintaining thermal performance and supporting safety on the jobsite, the insulating system plays a critical role in high performing hydrocarbon processing facilities.

Learn more about how foam glass insulation contributes to the design of high performing insulating systems at cryogenic facilities at ww.owenscorning.com/foamglasslngstudy.

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Hi, Lara.

Thank you for joining us.

How are things with you today?

Oh, fantastic.

Thanks for having me, Callum.

Great stuff.

So as you know, I'm going to be picking your brain about all things process safely today.

But before we get going, please can you tell our listeners a little bit about AFPM and your current role?

Yeah, no problem.

So I'm Laura Swett, the vice president of technical and safety programs at AFPM.

I run the operational excellence department.

So within my department, we have obviously occupational safety, process safety, but also operations, maintenance, process technology, process controls, training.

So the way we look at it here is operational excellence, it's the intersection of all of those things coming together to help industry improve.

Great.

So Laura, how did you get into safety?

Has it always been your focus area?

No, actually wanted to go into marketing.

I was a marketing major coming out of college.

I started at AFPM, or actually was NPRA, the National Petrochemical Refiners Association, back when I was 21.

I supported the Environmental Safety and Security departments as an administrative assistant.

I think where my passion for safety came in was around 2005 when BP Texas City occurred.

I was responsible for collecting the safety statistics for all of industry at that time.

And it was my first time really realizing that the numbers I were collecting were real people in real lives.

And I got more involved in safety after that, and probably took over the safety committee a few years after that occurred once the Baker report came out and all those learnings came out from Texas City and at that point process safety as we knew it was completely different and changed.

So the industry continues to improve in terms of process safety.

And I believe in your AFPM annual report, you noted that tier one process safety events have been cut in half over the last decade.

I think that's correct.

So what has been what's happened over this past decade to make that possible?

I think one of the big original step changes was the development of the process safety metric.

API RP seven fifty four is the standard that supports that.

It was a recommendation from the chemical safety board after BP Texas City, and it was the first time the industry had a common metric to collect and analyze process safety statistics.

So that's the big step change.

And from there, industry, we can analyze that data and identify opportunities to improve from an industry perspective, but also each company is looking at that data and from a site and company perspective for their own initiatives.

Around that time in 2010, when we released that standard, we were approached by several companies and asked if there's any opportunity to improve the sharing among companies for process safety information.

At that time, each of the companies were working process safety really hard, but it was within their own silos.

So they don't know what they don't know at that time.

They thought there was an opportunity to learn from other companies.

And process safety as safety is not proprietary.

So we actually developed several programs around process safety to help facilitate the learning and the sharing of information among all of industry.

And while that's not each company is doing really good stuff within their company, there was a lot of opportunity and a lot of learnings to help continue to improve process safety by leveraging what other companies were doing.

So are you able to give us any, perhaps, recent example of some of these programs at work?

I think the biggest example is probably our Walk the Line program.

When we first analyzed the data probably in 2012, earlier than that, 2011, 2012, we identified an opportunity where 30% of our cross safety events were occurring through operational discipline issues.

So operator lineup, valves turned the wrong way, open ended lines, open bleeders.

And so we developed with industry our Walk the Line program that really went into the culture of walk the line and then provided practice shares and tangible tools for industry to pick up based on their needs.

Now, what we're seeing is we still see walk the line issue incidents within industry, but it's not 30%.

We're looking more about 15 to 10%.

So we did see a huge step change there.

What's incredible from my perspective is that the weight that AFPM has when it comes to process safety in some of these programs ten years ago, no one knew what a walk the line incident is.

And now you go into pretty much every facility in The US and somebody has some walk the line program, they understand the terminology.

So that's just the power of an association supporting these types of efforts.

So what, Laura, do you think is the most challenging factor to control for in terms of process safety?

And what is the best guidance out there for managing it?

Probably the people factor, because the people factor is unpredictable.

Industry has changed their philosophy when it comes to people.

When I started twenty some years ago, an operator made an error and that operator gets fired.

Now, the philosophy and the perspective is that operator probably has something to share that we can continue to learn on.

No one wants to make a mistake.

No one goes out there saying, I'm going to make a mistake or cause this to happen.

Was the organization?

How was the organization, how was the practice, the procedure set up in a way where that operator was led to fail?

So it's a much different philosophy.

It's a different perspective.

But I think it's something that's going to make a significant change in industry.

If you look at it from the data perspective, fifteen, twenty, thirty years ago, were a lot more mechanical errors.

But as those programs have improved, as the equipments improve, the management of equipment, mechanical integrity, safe operating limits have all been established IOWs, now we're seeing more of the human element coming out.

So it's trying to factor in human air for the most part.

I wanted to ask you, Lara, are there any emerging technologies that you're particularly excited about when it comes to improving process safety?

And are there any examples where digital tools, for instance, are already starting to make a difference?

And you're still dealing with the human factor, but as technology improves, sensors improve, you're getting better data, you're identifying leaks earlier.

I think artificial intelligence is going to be interesting as we move through that.

More information at your fingertips.

One of the pitfalls there is making sure it's accurate.

You know, in terms of preventative metrics, we haven't cracked that nut yet, but there's obviously more tools available.

I think training is a huge one when it comes to technology, making it more immersive, more at the just in time at your fingertips, continued reinforcement, microlearning tools.

And the other ones that come to mind are tools and technology that, again, help prevent a human from making mistakes.

So, operating procedures where you can't, you know, digital operating procedures, everything at your fingertips where the control board can't move forward until the operator in the field has made their adjustment or change.

So it's really improving that communication between the board operator and the field operator.

So Laura, I think that you have some safety events coming up soon, and I was wondering if you'd like to tell us about those.

Yeah, one of our biggest events, and it's not just safety, and this is really, again, a huge different perspective from twenty years ago, obviously safety is everybody's responsibility, we've all said that.

But what we do is the summit, and it's about de siloing the learnings in the departments, and really looking at operational excellence from a very holistic view.

So we've got sessions that are developed with operators in mind, with maintenance in mind, with process technology in mind, and hearing all their different perspectives in one session.

Know, ten years ago, each one had their own conference, and they had the same discussions from their own perspective, but they didn't incorporate the perspectives of all these different disciplines and job functions.

So that's really the value of this Summit.

We have 95 sessions coming up really focused on operational excellence from a process technology perspective, operations, training, maintenance, mechanical integrity, process controls.

So just a wide variety of individuals, disciplines, job functions, talking about operational excellence together.

We can certainly vouch for this summit as well.

I think we've been partnering with you on the summit for a number of years now, and, we'll be there again this year.

If you're visiting, you'll be able to pick up the latest issue of hydrocarbon engineering as well as an added bonus for attending.

Laura, really appreciate you joining us for for this interesting conversation.

AFPM has obviously done a lot in this area to improve safety.

Yeah.

We really appreciate your your time and your your expertise on this today.

I appreciate.

Thank you, Kelm.

And that's a wrap for today's episode.

A big thank you to Laura for sharing her insights on process safety and the impressive strides the industry has made over the past decade.

As we discussed, the hydrocarbon engineering team will be attending the upcoming AFPM Summit in Grapevine, Texas from the twenty fifth to the August 28.

If you're interested in learning more about the Summit, please head over to summit.afpm.org.

Thanks for tuning in.

If you enjoyed the conversation, be sure to subscribe, leave us a review, and share the episode with your colleagues.

The Hydrocarbon Engineering Podcast is brought to you by Owens Corning Foam Glass Insulation.

From managing vapour drive and mitigating corrosion risk to maintaining thermal performance and supporting safety on the jobsite, the insulating system plays a critical role in high performing hydrocarbon processing facilities.

Learn more about how foam glass insulation contributes to the design of high performing insulating systems at cryogenic facilities at w w dot bowenscorning dot com slash foamglasslngstudy.

That's www.owenscorning.comfoamglaflngstudy.