Managing Process Safety Competency

82 Sandra Lovell is a Chartered Occupational Psychologist at ERM, UK and has worked across numerous high hazard industries including mining, manufacturing and oil & gas. She specialises in organisational culture and safety, human factors in system design, performance assessment & development in safety critical tasks and training systems. She has trained leaders in safety and in assessing competency in critical operations. ERM is a global provider of environmental, health, safety, risk and social consulting services, operating in 40 countries. Managing process safety competency is under renewed scrutiny in process industries. This article describes some of the recent drivers for managing safety competence in the process industries. It explores why this is important to organisations and individuals. Here competency encompasses not only skills, experience & expertise but even attitudinal aspects and mental makeup of staff. How organisations demonstrate competency management through the practical application of a competency management system is discussed.