Discover not-so-obvious process safety checks.

1. The Obvious-to-Obscure
Process Safety Checklist
for Plant Engineers
John T. Perez, P.E.
President – Cognascents
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2. John T. Perez, P.E.
Now:
1. Great wife and four enjoyable children
2. President of Cognascents – leadership, strategy, delivery excellence,
process safety consulting
3. Currently enrolled in Rice’s Executive MBA program
4. Member of Rice CHBE Alumni Advisory Board
5. Board member of neighborhood civic association
6. Active with Houston Livestock Show & Rodeo
Past:
1. B.S. Chemical Engineering – Rice University
2. Rohm & Haas – process engineer
3. Berwanger – process engineer / business development manager
4. Celerity3 Engineering – owner / PHA facilitator
5. Lloyd’s Register – President of Celerity3/Capstone
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3. The Obvious-to-Obscure
Process Safety Checklist
for Plant Engineers
John T. Perez, P.E.
President – Cognascents
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5. Guideposts
1. Setting the stage
2. Preserving the integrity of process safety
3. Resurgence of the checklist
4. Effective use and construction of checklists
5. Obvious-to-obscure process safety checklist
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6. Have we improved?
• From when and on what
performance metric?
• Process safety under fire
at highest levels of the
nation
• Problem beyond PSM-
covered facilities
• Is safety a value? A goal?
A behavior?
• Do we manage risk or
temper safety?
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7. What’s the point?
• We value our own life and
everyone else’s life;
therefore, we think and act
safely.
• Culture is barrier or carrier
to safe behavior.
• To change culture,
leadership must change.
• Leadership must exemplify
to and communicate/
educate behaviors to
support values.
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• Source of values
• Wisdom
• Humanity
• Temperance
• Transcendence
Leader
(value)
• Adopts values
• Slow to change
• Can outlast
leader’s tenure
Culture
(operating
envelope)
• Think
• Act
• Learn
Behavior
(evidence of
value strength)

8. Preserving process safety integrity
1. Constant
application of
2. Broad and deep
knowledge
3. By each entity
responsible for the
4. Performance of a
resource.
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9. The rub
1. Few doing a lot
2. Ever-changing roles and responsibilities
3. Few process safety experts
4. Few experts in everything
5. Tremendous body of knowledge
6. Shared responsibility = diluted accountability
7. Few formal competency assessment and
technical authorization programs
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10. Resurgence of checklist
1. Atul Gawande
2. Re-discovered while
examining medical
industry to better
understand clusters
of excellence
3. Effective use by high-
performers
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11. Effective use of effective checklists
1. Purpose
2. Development
3. Content and
format
4. Structure
5. Testing and
validation
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12. The Obvious-to-Obscure
1. Obvious – conveyed through schooling and
company’s technical onboarding process
2. Potentially obvious – conveyed through training
from entry-level to mid-level engineer
3. Potentially obscure – conveyed through training
from mid-level to senior level engineer/manager
4. Obscure – conveyed through advanced/expert
training, application, experience
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13. The obvious
1. Standards/guidelines
2. Processes/protocols
3. PSI/SOPs
4. Do I understand the
process?
5. Do I understand how this
piece of equipment
works?
6. What real-time
information can I check?
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14. The potentially obvious
1. Moral courage – who is
responsible for blowing
the whistle and
slamming on the brakes?
2. Experience/History –
what has happened in
the past and where is the
historical information for
review?
3. Organizational wisdom –
who are the experts and
how do I reach them?
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15. The potentially obscure
1. Leadership and
accountability
consolidation
2. Experience level of
responsible process
safety personnel
3. Scope
4. Self-awareness prompt
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16. The obscure
1. Experience and
expertise biases
2. Morale pulse
3. Big picture pause
4. Persuasion and
influence monitoring
5. “In the moment”
evaluation
6. Self-awareness test
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17. Pressure relief design and analysis
1. What are the industry’s
best practices? Says who?
2. What has changed since
the original calculation?
3. Who is the resident SME?
What are their
qualifications?
4. Who did the original
calculations? How
knowledgeable and
experienced were they at
time of analysis?
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5. Am I qualified to do this
analysis?
6. Am I qualified to
review/accept a third-party
effort?
7. How credible are any
assumptions made?
8. Does my organization truly
understand what this study
means … beyond the
compliance driver?

18. Management of change
1. Am I the right/best
person to lead this
MOC?
2. Does everyone involved
understand the
scope/systems being
reviewed?
3. Do I need any experts to
attend in person?
4. If experts are in
attendance, are they in
expert mode?
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5. Is everyone in the
moment? If not, what
distractions do I need to
address before
proceeding?
6. Am I leading the jury with
how I have presented
the situation?
7. Am I trying to
demonstrate my value
with this change or is the
change truly valuable?

19. Process hazards analysis
1. Are the right people
present? Is the engineer
knowledgeable and
experienced in the
system being analyzed?
The technician/operator?
2. Is all of the necessary
information available?
Really, all of it?
3. Is the information up to
date? Did I do a spot
check?
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4. Does everyone in the
room have the right
attitude?
5. Is scope driving the time
or is time driving the
scope?
6. Is everyone
participating?
7. Is the facilitator leading
the jury? Being
ineffective? Focused on
billable hours?

20. Key takeaways
1. Leadership drives culture and culture drives behavior.
2. We must continue to strive to prevent all incidents.
3. Process safety excellence requires constant application
of broad and deep knowledge by each entity
responsible for the performance of a resource.
4. We must use effective checklists effectively.
5. Effective checklists must account for obvious to obscure
process safety elements.
6. My abstract should not make the first page of results for
Google’s “process safety checklist” search.
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21. Thank You!
Any questions?
Contact Info:
John T. Perez, P.E.
President – Cognascents
M: (713) 882-0182
john.perez@cognascents.com
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