Handbook for Process Safety in Laboratories and Pilot Plants

Part 7 – Learning from Experience

Even the most committed and diligent LAPP organizations have room for improvement in their management system processes to prevent process safety incidents. The first three pillars of RBPS help the LAPP establish a management system. Table 1‐2 lists the elements of RBPS and lists their associated chapters in this book.

After the risk management system is established, the elements in the RBPS Learning from Experience pillar help the organization continuously improve and more effectively manage risk. To be most effective, learning from experience should go beyond just incident investigation and include learnings from ongoing evaluations and monitoring of the risk management system by performance metrics, inspection findings, and management system audit findings.

Part 6 describes how an organization can learn from experience through four different but related management system elements:

• Incident Investigation
• Measurement and Metrics
• Auditing
• Management Review and Continuous Improvement

The goal in implementing these final four risk management system elements is to provide a systematic approach to help the organization:

• Assess how well the risk management practices (represented by the first 16 elements) have been implemented and where opportunities exist to reinforce and improve the positive results of good practices
• Allocate resources based on risk considerations to address any significant deficiencies to better manage and continually reduce ...