How is it different from personal safety?
Personal safety focuses on slips, cuts and lifting injuries. Process safety focuses on keeping hazardous materials and energy inside their containment, because a single loss of containment can harm many people at once. Low injury rates do not show that process risk is under control.
What are the 14 elements of PSM?
OSHA's PSM standard lists these 14 elements:
- Employee participation
- Process safety information
- Process hazard analysis (PHA)
- Operating procedures
- Training
- Contractors
- Pre-startup safety review
- Mechanical integrity
- Hot work permit
- Management of change
- Incident investigation
- Emergency planning and response
- Compliance audits
- Trade secrets
The Center for Chemical Process Safety (CCPS) publishes a broader risk-based framework with 20 elements, which many companies use alongside or instead of the regulatory list.
Who has to follow it?
OSHA PSM applies to processes that involve listed highly hazardous chemicals, or flammable liquids and gases above set threshold quantities. Not every chemical plant is covered, and some exemptions exist, so check the standard itself.
What is the Australian equivalent?
Australia has no regulation called PSM. The nearest equivalent is the major hazard facility (MHF) regime in the model Work Health and Safety Regulations, Chapter 9, and the equivalent state rules such as Victoria's. Facilities above threshold quantities of hazardous chemicals must be licensed, operate a safety management system and submit a safety case. Smaller sites still manage hazardous chemicals under the general WHS duties. Which regime applies depends on your jurisdiction and quantities, so confirm with the regulator.
Where does it go wrong?
- Process hazard analyses are done once and never revalidated.
- Changes to equipment or procedures skip management of change.
- Maintenance and inspection actions are overdue and nobody sees it.
- Incident investigations stop at human error rather than system causes.
Controls from a risk assessment are strongest when they follow the hierarchy of control. Following these elements supports safer operation but is no assurance of safety or of regulatory compliance.