Claim OwnershipProcess Safety with Trish & Traci
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Sharing insight from recent process-safety incidents to avoid accidents at chemical processing plants.
116 Episodes
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Chernobyl, Bhopal, Three Mile Island, Deepwater Horizon, Texas City — What do they have in common? Human error or human factors were identified as contributing to the incidents. But what are these factors?
Understanding how people actually perceive, decide and act is essential to preventing catastrophic industrial accidents and everyday errors.
This In Case You Missed It episode brings the written word to life from the column:
Human Factors Engineering: Designing Systems Around Our Limitations
In this episode, Trish Kerin and Traci Purdum explore process hazard analysis revalidations and how to make them more effective. Kerin explains the difference between redoing a PHA and revalidating existing assessments, introducing the Delta HAZOP methodology that focuses on creeping change in facilities. She discusses triggers for revalidation, from legislative requirements to significant operational changes, and emphasizes the importance of selecting the right team and methodology. Kerin highlights how AI and machine learning can help gather data and identify trends, while stressing that human expertise remains essential. The key takeaway: approach revalidations with rigor and discipline, not as tick-box exercises, to truly identify hazards and manage risk effectively.
Applying risk management principles helps Process Safety Engineer Trish Kerin navigate her first successful year of self-employment. Listen in as Trish brings her January column to life. You can read her column here.
Engineers couldn't prove danger, so managers launched anyway. Seven astronauts died when O-rings failed in freezing temperatures. Apply the lessons learned to help avoid future incidents.
Three Key Takeaways:
Reverse the burden of proof: Require positive proof that something is safe before proceeding, rather than forcing engineers to prove it's unsafe.
Simplify safety communication: Complex data failed to convince decision-makers, but a simple demonstration (O-ring in ice water) made the danger crystal clear.
Protect technical authority: Engineers need more than just formal authority to stop unsafe operations — they need genuine psychological safety to exercise that power without career consequences.
This In Case You Missed It episode brings the written word to life. Today, Trish Kerin, the director of Lead Like Kerin, and Stay Safe columnist for Chemical Processing, will read her column "Bird’s-Eye View Prevents Process Safety Groundings," which was published to chemicalprocessing.com on Dec. 17, 2025.
In this year-end episode, hosts Trish Kerin and Traci Purdum welcome Hayley Little, a U.K.-based process safety engineer who tracks quarterly catastrophic incidents on LinkedIn. The discussion explores origin stories in process safety, the critical gap in fundamental safety knowledge outside petrochemical industries, and the alarming frequency of preventable incidents in lower-hazard sectors. They discuss innovative solutions including AI tools, virtual reality training and social media outreach to democratize process safety education. The conversation emphasizes the urgent need for better university training, field presence over desk work and human factors integration to make it easier to "accidentally get it right."
This In Case You Missed It episode brings the written word to life. Today, Trish Kerin, the director of Lead Like Kerin, and Stay Safe columnist for Chemical Processing, will read the first few chapters from her book “The Platypus Philosophy – how to identify and manage weak signals”
This book explores weak signals and focuses on how to identify and manage them to prevent incidents. It uses fun storytelling about the unique platypus as a technique to explain complex concepts and tools.
You can purchase this book on Amazon or snag a signed copy from Trish’s website, leadlikekerin.com.
The Buncefield explosion occurred when a gasoline storage tank overfilled after both its level gauge and independent high-level switch failed. Gasoline vapor formed a massive cloud that ignited, causing significant damage to surrounding business parks. Fortunately, the Sunday morning timing prevented fatalities, though 43 injuries occurred. The incident revealed critical gaps in safety control verification, testing procedures, and maintenance regimes. Twenty years later, the disaster emphasizes the importance of recognizing weak signals, maintaining bund integrity, and ensuring operators actively monitor tank filling operations rather than relying solely on automated systems.
In this episode, Trish Kerin reads her most recent column, which highlights the importance of immediate communication in safety situations, even when complete information isn't yet available to share.
You can read the column here.
Trevor Kletz revolutionized process safety through HAZOP advocacy, inherent safety principles, learning from accidents, and emphasizing design simplification over complex add-ons. In this episode, Trish & Traci discuss his many contributions to the world of process safety.
When OSHA's Process Safety Management (PSM) standard took effect in 1992, it promised a new era of systematic hazard identification. Three decades later, process safety professionals are still witnessing the same critical oversights repeatedly compromising facility safety—oversights that have contributed to near misses, and far worse, major incidents.
Editor-in-Chief Traci Purdum reads an article from Felicia Miller, senior principal engineer at ABSG Consulting and Darshankumar Lakhani, senior manager in engineering at ABSG.
Original article: https://www.chemicalprocessing.com/safety-security/risk-assessment/article/55311485/hidden-hazards-10-common-pha-oversights
This episode explores the critical role of equipment reliability in chemical processing, focusing on three major incidents: Longford, BP Texas City and Buncefield. Trish highlights how faulty instrumentation, poor maintenance and overlooked management of change led to catastrophic failures, fatalities and environmental impacts. The discussion emphasizes safety-critical elements, maintenance KPIs and the importance of accurate instrumentation.
Workers who challenge flawed procedures can improve safety and production. In this episode, Trish Kerin reads her latest column, which details how a trip to Tasmania with her sister turned getting lost into a process safety lesson of not blindly following procedures.
Enjoy as our favorite Australian safety guru guides you through the Bass Strait to Cataract Gorge.
In this episode, Trish Kerin and Traci Purdum discuss process safety insights with Alex Fernando and Warren Smith from Incident Analytics. Their research analyzed over 10,000 incidents across 12 countries and multiple high-risk industries.
Key findings include that organizations often misclassify serious incidents, missing critical learning opportunities. Many safety controls are "difficult" or "unworkable" in practice, with workers adapting procedures to get jobs done despite inadequate equipment or impractical requirements. The research reveals a significant gap between "work as imagined" and "work as done."
A fundamental shift in leadership thinking needs to take place — from asking "why didn't they follow the procedure?" to "why couldn't they follow the procedure?"
References:
Whitepaper 1
Whitepaper 2
This episode revisits the critical topic of permit-to-work systems, exploring how these systems manage the safe transfer of equipment ownership between operations and maintenance teams. Trish & Traci discuss key elements, different permit types, common failures, and the tragic Piper Alpha disaster.
Mastering Tim Tam timing mirrors process safety's critical risk-reward balance. Get it right and you’ll reap rewards.
As the bickie became gooey in my fingers, I knew the moment was now — time to slam that Tim Tam.
A Tim Tam is an Australian bickie — or cookie, to those of you in the U.S. It was created in 1964 by Arnott’s and is an iconic Aussie treat. It consists of two rectangular bickies with a flavored cream filling that is coated in chocolate. A Tim Tam Slam is a unique way to consume the bickie. The steps are as follows:
This 100th episode of "Process Safety With Trish and Traci" examines the 2003 Space Shuttle Columbia disaster through the lens of due diligence. Columbia disintegrated during re-entry after foam debris damaged heat shield tiles during launch. The podcast explores how NASA normalized foam strikes over time, turning "lessons of failure into memories of success." Multiple intervention opportunities were missed due to inadequate resources, poor communication, and cultural barriers.
On a sunny summer day in 2007 near Wichita, Kansas, a tanker truck was offloading naphthalene into a stainless-steel tank at a solvent tank farm when the container spontaneously ignited, catching fire and exploding, shooting projectiles in the air. This led to the evacuation of thousands in a nearby community. While there were no casualties, the explosion destroyed the entire storage facility, luckily not causing any injuries or fatalities in the nearby community.
An investigation determined that electrostatic charge buildup had caused a spark that ignited a solvent-air mixer in the vapor space in the vessel receiving naphtha from the tanker truck.
In this episode, Traci Purdum, CP's editor-in-chief, reads an article from authors Tom Patnaik and Christian Stentzel -- both of Thaletec. The article was published May 21, 2025.
Risk assessment should still be a manual process, but AI can streamline data collection to enable sound engineering judgments.
In this episode, Trish and Traci welcome guest Dheerajkumar Narang, whose research examines how AI and machine learning can enhance process safety compliance. Traditional compliance methods are time-consuming and fragmented across different systems, while AI can automate data collection, identify leading indicators and predict compliance outcomes. Key challenges include system integration with legacy infrastructure and maintaining domain expertise for regulatory updates. AI should streamline processes to allow operators to focus on critical tasks.
In this episode, Trish and Traci discuss the catastrophic failure at Queensland's Callide Power Station C4 on May 25, 2021, which caused power outages for 470,000 people. During a routine switching operation to replace DC battery systems, a voltage drop was misinterpreted as an AC fault, triggering a cascading failure. Both AC and DC systems failed, leaving the turbine without lubrication while it continued spinning backwards at 3,000 RPM.
The incident demonstrates that process safety principles apply beyond traditional chemical plants to any high-hazard environment. Key lessons include proper hazard identification, functioning safety controls, and maintaining culture, leadership, accountability and governance in safety management.
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