The US pipeline operators are regulated to develop, implement, and enforce control room management plans to ensure the safety and security of people, pipelines, property and the environment. Canadian pipeline operators are not being forgotten, the National Energy Board (NEB) is requiring compliance with Onshore Pipeline Regulations (OPR-99) where they have to develop and implement a management and protection program. Much like the US PHMSA regulations this will be enforced by an audit process for compliance. We (UCDS) have been involved with the development of these types of safety programs and we know and understand what regulators are looking for. We our offering our Canadian customers the same type of support we provided for the US pipeline operators where we perform a gap analysis against the regulation requirements and identify how much work is needed, from there we will act as project lead to develop the plan, policies, and ensure that our customers meet all the requirements of the NEB. Below you can see a summary of the Canadian regulations:

1. The company shall have a policy approved and endorsed by senior management. It should include goals and objectives and commit to improving the performance of the company.

2. The company shall be able to demonstrate a procedure to identify all possible hazards. The company should assess the degree of risk associated with these hazards. The company should be able to support the rationale for including or excluding possible risks in regard to its environment, safety, integrity, crossings and awareness and emergency management and protection programs (management and protection programs). The company should be able to implement control measures to minimize or eliminate the risk.

3. The company shall have a verifiable process for the identification and integration of legal requirements into its management and protection programs. The company should have a documented procedure to identify and resolve non-compliances as they relate to legal requirements which includes updating the management and protection programs as required.

4. The company should have goals, objectives and quantifiable targets relevant to the risks and hazards associated with the company’s facilities and activities (i.e. construction, operations and maintenance). The objectives and targets should be measurable and consistent with the Policy and legal requirements and ideally include continual improvement and prevention initiatives, where appropriate.

5. The company shall have an organizational structure that allows its management and protection programs to effectively function. The company should have clear roles and responsibilities, which may include responsibilities for the development, implementation and management of the management and protection programs.

6. The company shall have a management of change program. The program should include:
• identification of changes that could affect the management and protection programs
• documentation of the changes
• analysis of implications and effects of the changes, including introduction of new risks or hazards or legal requirements.

7. The company shall have a documented training program for employees and contractors related to the company’s management and protection programs. The company shall inform visitors to company maintenance sites of the practices and procedures to be followed. Training requirements should include information about program-specific policies. Training should include emergency preparedness and environmental response requirements as well as the potential consequences of not following the requirements. The company should determine the required levels of competency for employees and contractors. Training shall evaluate competency to ensure desired knowledge requirements have been met. Training programs should include record management procedures. The training program should include methods to ensure staff remains current in their required training. The program should include requirements and standards for addressing any identified non-compliances to the training requirement.

8. The company should have an adequate, effective and documented communication process(es): to inform all persons associated with the company’s facilities and activities (interested persons) of its management and protection programs: policies, goals, objectives and commitments; to inform and consult with interested persons about issues associated with its operations; to address communication from external stakeholders; for communicating the legal and other related requirements pertaining to the management and protection programs to interested persons; to communicate the program’s roles and responsibilities to interested persons.

9. The company should have documentation to describe the elements of its management and protection programs- where warranted. The documentation should be reviewed and revised at regular and planned intervals. Documents should be revised immediately where changes are required as a result of legal requirements or where failure to make immediate changes may result in negative consequences. The company should have procedures within its management and protection programs to control documentation and data as it relates to the risks.

10. The company should establish and maintain a process to develop, implement and communicate mitigative, preventive and protective measures to address the risks and hazards. The process should include measures to reduce or eliminate risks and hazards at their source, where appropriate.

11. The company shall establish and maintain plans and procedures to identify the potential for upset or abnormal operating conditions, accidental releases, incidents and emergency situations. The company shall also define proposed responses to these events and prevent and mitigate the likely consequence and/or impacts of these events. The procedures must be periodically tested and reviewed and revised where appropriate (for example, after emergency events).

12. The company shall develop and implement surveillance and monitoring programs. These programs should address contract work being performed on behalf of the company. These programs should include qualitative and quantitative measures for evaluating the management and protection programs and should, at a minimum, address legal requirements as well as the risks.  The company should integrate the surveillance and monitoring results with other data in risk assessments and performance measures, including proactive trend analyses. The company shall have documentation and records of its surveillance and monitoring programs.

13. The company shall have a process to investigate incidents or any non-compliance that may occur. The company shall have a process to mitigate any potential or actual issues arising from such incidents or non-compliances. Such mitigation may include appropriate timing and actions for addressing the issues that arise. The company shall demonstrate that it has established a documented procedure to:
• set criteria for non-compliance;
• identify the occurrence of any non-compliances;
• investigate the cause(s) of any non-compliances;
• develop corrective and/or preventative actions; and
• effectively implement the required corrective and/or preventative actions.

14. The company should develop procedures to analyze incident data in order to identify deficiencies and opportunities for improvement in its management and protection programs and procedures.

15. The company shall establish and implement procedures to ensure that the records supporting the management and protection programs are retained, accessible and maintained. The company shall, as a minimum, retain all records for the minimum lengths of time as required by the applicable legislation, regulation and standards incorporated by reference into the regulation.

16. The company shall develop and implement a documented process to undertake audits of its management and protection programs and procedures. The audit process should identify and manage the training and competency requirements for staff carrying out the audits. These audits shall be conducted on a regular basis.

17. Senior management should formally review the management and protection programs for continuing suitability, adequacy and effectiveness. The review should be based on appropriate documentation and records including the results of the surveillance, monitoring and audit programs. This review should be formal and documented and should occur on a regular basis. The management review should include a review of any decisions, actions and commitments which relate to the improvement of the programs and the company’s overall performance.

Please contact us for more details on our OPR-99 compliance gap analysis. 512.868.6798 / website

If you have any technical questions on the regulations you can contact Ken Colosimo for communication in English at
403-292-4926 or Marc Pauzé for communication in French at 403-299-2790.
ken.colosimo@neb-one.gc.ca

Waco police Sergeant William Patrick Swanton said in a morning press conference that the emergency response was still in its search and rescue phase, but that eventually it would have to become one of recovery. “They are still getting injured folks out and they are evacuating people from their homes,” he said. “They have not gotten to the point of no return where they don’t think that there’s anybody still alive.”

The blast, which could be heard 45 miles away and shook the ground with a force equivalent to a magnitude 2.1 earthquake, happened just before 8pm on Wednesday, leveling up to 80 homes in the blocks around the facility. As a mushroom cloud climbed into the sky, more than 1,000 people in the town of around 2,800 were left without power. An apartment complex was ripped to shreds, a middle school was reportedly in flames, and 133 people, many of them injured, were evacuated from a nursing home. “I’ve never seen anything like this,” said McLennan County Sheriff Parnell McNamara. “It looks like a war zone.”

Emergency services said ammonia may have caused the fireball at West Fertilizer Inc, which reportedly had 20 tons of anhydrous ammonia on site. The site was being treated as a crime scene, officials said, though in the immediate aftermath there was no indication of the blast being anything other than an industrial accident.

It is no secret that many of the process technologies within our industry carry their own set of challenges and risks. Inherent in hydrocarbon processing is the continual concern for worker and operations protection in the event of explosion and fire. The ongoing history of refining is replete with accounts of disasters arising from simple and complex causes. Pipe corrosion was determined to be the prime cause of a May 2009 explosion and fire at the ethylene unit of Sunoco’s Marcus Hook refinery, located in Delaware. Superheated feed stock leaked out of a rusty pipe and ignited, causing a vapor cloud explosion (VCE). Even though the refining industry has experienced advances in process and safety technologies, risk of a blast event still comes with the  territory, underscoring the need for greater emphasis on worker and equipment safety.

The design, development and deployment of blast resistant structures to protect workers, power and process controls has been ongoing within hydrocarbon processing (HP) and chemical manufacturing. In more recent years the demand for these types of buildings has resulted in the creation of a relatively new industry that can provide benefits physically and financially to petrochemical companies and other chemical processing plants.

Although blast resistant shelters are being used at land-based chemical processing plants, their origins can be traced to the use of externally reinforced, steel intermodal shipping containers in offshore safety applications. Freight containers have been in plentiful supply since their inception, and their structural strength makes them natural candidates for personnel protection from low-level blasts. Converted containers are resistant to blast loads in the 1.0 to 2.0-psi range. However, much higher loads are experienced at refinery blast events, given distance and other variables affecting the force of a VCE, necessitating the use of stronger structures. This need led to the fabrication of the first, custom-designed blast resistant modules and the industry has been evolving ever since. The response of industry to the need for ensuring personnel and plant safety reached a high degree of intensity after March 23, 2005. On that day a series of explosions ripped through BP’s Texas City, TX refinery during the restarting of process equipment at the refinery’s isomerization unit, killing fifteen workers and injuring 180 others. A tremendous loss of manpower and equipment was suffered and as a result, the unit did not come back online for another two years.

Since this incident, demand has increased significantly for blast resistant, steel-fabricated buildings providing protection at HP facilities. Industry guidelines have been established to facilitate the design, construction and optimal location of blast resistant modules for personnel protection, as well as blast resistant electrical equipment centers (BRECs) for protection of the critical electrical process functions of the facilities they serve. The addressing of safety concerns at petrochemical and other hazardous manufacturing facilities began largely in the 1990s, resulting in publication of the Occupational Safety & Health Administration’s (OSHA) Process Safety Management (PSM) standards. In response to the OSHA publication, a joint effort was initiated by the American Petroleum Institute (API) and the Chemical Manufacturers Association (CMA) to establish a set of guidelines directly addressing OSHA’s concerns in the published PSM standards. This response is contained in API Recommended Practice 752, Management of Hazards Associated with Location of Process Plant Buildings.

Following the conclusions reached in the wake of events at Texas City, OSHA initiated a series of National Emphasis Program (NEP) Audits at U.S. refineries, during which OSHA inspectors began issuing citations to companies for failure to adequately protect essential or critical equipment at their facilities. This has added momentum to an already growing movement on the part of petrochemical firms to provide strong, ductile, affordable protective shelters. Advances in the design, testing and manufacture of such structures have served to further ensure market viability for them.

The primary function of blast resistant shelters has been to protect personnel at facilities at risk for accidental explosions. On the other hand, risk managers, engineers and owners of companies also realize that the risk of exposure to overpressure or blast wave extends to the critical and essential power and control systems of their facilities as well. Outside of protecting personnel during a blast event at a refinery, nothing is more critical than sustaining the proper function of process-related automatic shutoff valves and other critical power equipment, as well as water pumps for fire protection.

The manufacturing industry for blast resistant modules (BRMs) offers a wide range of sizes and blast ratings, conforming to IBC design and construction practices. BRMs are most often used as a substitute for unrated construction trailers but may be configured into multiple sections. Multi-sectional systems may be large single story buildings or stacked to create a multi-story configuration. Examples include offices, cafeterias, and even sleeping quarters.

In the past, all control was done from field shelters. A control system upgrade has enabled the site to move to a new control facility. The field shelters will still be used by field operators for important functions such as maintenance coordination, issuing work permits, sampling, new employee training, but are poorly designed for these functions. The main controls are transferred to the new control room, but maintenance and backup control view is available in the field shelter and is used for diagnosing, testing, and training. With the removal of the console operator it is important to re-design the room for the field operator functionality. These renovations may include hardening the building.

UCDS has in-depth experience in designing control rooms and modifying existing field shelters. Our process is compliant with the ISO 11064 Ergonomic Design Standard for Control Buildings. We interview management, supervision and a significant group of the operators to understand functional requirements, what works well in the existing environment, and identification and correction of problems with the existing design. Some customers prefer to walk away from their existing building and move the field operators into a Modular Blast Resistant Building. Our process helps facilitate this move and provides a detailed design for the Modular Building manufacturer. We help identify if you can rationalize many field shelters into a smaller number of more centralized field shelters. One site went from 16 field shelters to 3 new field shelters, utilizing modular buildings, located in strategic locations.

The first step in the process is identifying the required number and location of field shelters required. This is accomplished by reviewing process safety information, site plans, and API RP752 reports and then discussing renovation, remodel, or alternative solutions with plant personnel. Once the number field shelters has been established, we spend time capturing requirements from managers, supervisors, operators along with other secondary users of the building such as maintenance, planners, and laboratory staff. UCDS will ensure rooms are designed for functional requirements and good collaboration and communication, whilst addressing traffic flow through the building and minimizing disturbances. The building will also address issues such as responding to emergency situations and how operators use equipment like respirators and specialized PPE. We develop design alternatives and solicit feedback from the users. We then integrate this feedback into a final design and generate a budget estimate. To modify an existing building to code and to develop an estimate an architect will need to be involved. This estimate may require local planning permission, upgrading buildings to today’s building codes, and developing construction drawings. As the Client goes through the iterative process of finalizing the building design, User Centered Design Services will be available for consultation as required.

Our hearts and prayers go out to the victims of this horrible incident. May we learn from this event and do all that we can to protect each other today and tomorrow.

As many of you already know, PHMSA has regulated pipeline operators to follow human factor guidelines for safer pipeline operations. This is known throughout the pipeline industry as CRM Control Room Management, which includes a written plan addressing control room ergonomics, alarm management, HMI design, and fatigue mitigation.

The Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration develops and enforces regulations for the safe, reliable, and environmentally sound operation of the nation’s 2.6 million mile pipeline transportation system of hazardous materials by land, sea, and air. Please visit http://phmsa.dot.gov for more information.

Today PHMSA announced that the increased maximum civil penalties  for safety violations of Federal hazardous materials transportation law and the regulations issued under that law that lead to death, serious injuries or extensive property damage are  now in effect.  The increased penalties are being published in revisions to PHMSA’s regulations and reflect statutory changes in the Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act (MAP-21).

Civil penalties are assessed for knowingly violating  a hazardous material transportation law or a regulation, order, special permit or approval issued under that law.  MAP-21 provides that the following updated civil penalties apply to violations occurring on or after October 1, 2012:
·        The maximum civil penalty is increased from $55,000 to $75,000.

·        The maximum civil penalty that result in death, serious illness, severe injury to any person or substantial destruction of property is increased from $110,000 to $175,000.

·        The $250 minimum civil penalty has been eliminated.

·        The civil penalty for violations related to training has reverted to $450

The final rule is available here.
https://www.federalregister.gov/

The calculated alarm count over the time period (ie alarms on the alarm list display) had an average of 36 process variables in alarm.
New limits or maintenance were recommended for 54 process variables. These changes give an 85% reduction in standing alarms and a 50% reduction in annunciation rate. The revised limits sit on the boundary of normal process operation. This both reduces nuisance alarms and enhances operator trust in the remaining alarms.

For the process portion of the gas processing plant examined in the second week, 445 tags with alarm limits were considered. The historic alarm counts for this period calculated from historic data were 20-44 standing alarms with an average of 29 at any time.
The alarm limits were revised by identifying tags where the current limits were inconsistent with the current operation. This included cases where variables were often in alarm as current bad actors, known and unknown process or mechanical faults, and alarm limits so far outside the range of normal operation as to provide late or no warning of process upset. Fifteen tags were identified for maintenance attention, limits for 13 tags were modified, and 42 limits were identified for removal. The performance afterward had 0-12 standing alarms with 2 average for a 90% reduction in alarm count and a 66% reduction in annunciation.

UCDS has had a very busy travel schedule again this month, with a lot of work for existing customers.  It is always nice to see satisfied customers returning to us with new work.  Poor Dave has spent a lot of time in Canada; he always seems to get the cold weather jobs so next month I am taking him to Europe for a change.  The end of this month Dave and I will be returning to Norway (not too much warmer here Dave!) to expand on some of the work we have done for our good friends at Borregaard Refinery.  We appreciate the continual trust you have in us and promise to do our best work for you.  We look forward to catching up with our good friend’s Mark & Marie Green in Oslo and Halden; our friendship is one of the treasurers we have when we travel.  Mark and Marie are exceptional Consultants and do a lot of work for customers needing good human factor/ergonomic advice and implementation; we share many common philosophies, even though we do a lot of projects very differently.  When you work in a big company you may have many people you can go to run ideas by or ask questions about something you are not sure about.  When you work in a small company you survive by the networking you do and friendships like this keep you informed about changes or new ideas.  The last time Mark and I met up he had attended some lectures by Stephen Few.  Mark not only shared what he learned but he gave me three new books to read by Few on Dashboards; how to show people numbers and some interesting graphical ways to show information.  Now that is what friendship and collaboration is all about.  I love these guys and would do anything for them.  By the way, apart from Marie being a good consultant and very knowledgeable about alarm management, she is one of the finest chefs I have ever had the pleasure to know and taste the fruits of her labors.

As you may have noticed, we have done a complete facelift to our website, many customers commented that the old design was hard to read on some browsers, so we listened and responded. We have added a lot of new stuff and will be adding a lot more in the next few months. Our goal is to make it clear what we do and how we can help you.  We are looking at expanding our services even more as we continue to grow and maintain our professional standards.

It is a joy to have Christi working with us.  I went on a trip to California with her this last week and we had a great site visit to one of our customers from last year who has called us back and is starting to implement the recommendations from our last visit.  We had great fun looking at how to add an additional control room console and how to modify their existing control room to remove the old panels and existing desk/console that shall we say has a few ergonomic challenges.  This single console will be replaced by three new sit/stand ergonomic consoles that will eventually support a new High Performance HMI.

Like most capital projects it will be done in phases, doing minor improvements until they finally achieve the vision we have shared with them.  Limitations exist and compromises have to be made when you take a very old electrical panel and all of its wiring and convert it to today’s automation technology, some of the work will be done during shutdowns, but a lot is being done while the plant is running which requires good planning and careful implementation.  During my visit I learned about a couple of security threats that got this plants attention and obviously these concerns are going to have to be addressed during the control room refurbishment.  This was one plant that I least expected to hear this from, but talking to the operators it is a real threat and something that makes them lose sleep at nighttime.

Talk about timing, I just finished a Chapter in my new book on this topic and I had done a lot of new research, studying the new and future regulations, training courses and new materials that are being discussed for Chemical Plant’s and Pipeline Control Room Security.  All of our team has gone through the homeland security training courses and Anti-terrorism training.  One of the new services we are going to offer is “Building Vulnerability Assessments”.  We have done this to some extent on all our control room projects, we developed a checklist years ago before this became a hot topic and we have sat down with site security, corporate security folks and developed a strategy to address concerns during conceptual and detailed control room design.  But this is going to be a lot more than that.  Even if you have no plans to upgrade or replace your control room, a couple of our experts will come to your facility and complete the assessment, something I think your insurance companies will value.  It will be very comprehensive and will identify strengths and weaknesses and make prioritized recommendations for a continuous improvement plan.

The assessment will not be just the physical building but will incorporate an assessment of critical electrical systems.  Are electrical distribution systems located in secure locations?  Does electrical emergency backup power exist for all areas within the building or for critical areas only?  Is the emergency power system independent from normal electrical service, particularly in critical areas?  The assessment will focus on assets value, threat/hazard, vulnerability, and risk and will be compliant with the latest thinking from Homeland Security, and public security organizations.  I soon hope to be introducing you to a new team member who will focus on this part of the business.

We continue to make good progress on HP HMI projects with our good friend’s from Lin & Associates doing the implementation of the graphics.  We have a major project in Trinidad that is going extremely well and getting good feedback from the plant operators.

As you can see, UCDS continues to strive toward our goal of being the go to company for control rooms, covering 100% of the related tasks that goes on in the control room.  We have done this by adding complementary expertise in Electrical, Instrumentation, Engineering, Control Engineering, Chemical Engineering, Operations Management, Training, HFE, and when necessary, bringing in expertise by our Affiliates.   Please contact us if we can assist you in your control room at smaddox@mycontrolroom.com.

Press release:

Shift Worker and Fatigue (measuring the Risk)

Operator fatigue is a critical safety issue that cuts across all modes and operations in our industry. Every day, operators and managers must cope with unusual and difficult work schedules and the reality of operator fatigue. Fatigue may produce physical and mental decrements in alertness, vigilance, and decision-making that can increase the risk of human error and result in fatalities and injuries. However, the incidence of fatigue is underestimated in virtually every industry because it is hard to quantify and measure. Recognizing that fatigue management requires major changes in both organizational culture and operator behavior, we are focused on facing these challenges. We bring together the expertise of government, industry, and labor to create solutions to aid in understanding and managing shift worker fatigue. Some experts recommend limiting the number of consecutive working days to five, six or seven days depending on the length of the workday. Some recommend limiting 8-hour shifts to a maximum of seven in a row, and 12-hour shifts to four in a row. Many factors have to be considered, when you’re looking for the best candidate to work overtime or cover a shift and risk factor can be hard to calculate.

•           Duration of Working Time
•           Time Off Between Shifts
•           Time Off Between Blocks of Work Days
•           Long Breaks Before Returning To Work
•           Duration of Shifts
•           Fixed or Rotating Shifts
•           Speed and Direction of Rotation
•           Start and End of Shifts

Risk factor is very important when creating schedules. That’s why UCDS Incorporated partnered with Circadian, to bring our customers a solution. A tool that can calculate the fatigue score and compare it to other workers, allowing management to staff positions with the most alert and ready to work candidates.

CIRCADIAN®, the leader in Fatigue Risk Management Software and User Centered Design Services now offer the only complete suite of web-based software tools for Fatigue Risk Management Systems. Our Fatigue Risk Management Software provides all three required levels of FRMS control:

Level 1 – COMPLIANCE:
Schedule Compliance Analyzer™
•           Determine if a work schedule conforms with “Hours of Service” and “Work-Rest rules”
•           Specially tailored versions for RP-755, and other industry and government FRMS standards and “Hours of Work rules”
•           Asses scheduling alternatives (e.g., who’s available for OT? Is that shift swap OK?)•

Level 2 – RISK:
Schedule Fatigue Risk Analyzer™
•           Instantly determine if a work schedule is creating excessive and costly fatigue risk
•           Utilizes Circadian’s scientifically-validated CAS-5 fatigue modeling platform to provide an objective Fatigue Risk Score
•           With a fatigue score your schedulers can see not only who could work…but who should work

Level 3 – INVESTIGATION:
Fatigue Accident/Incident Causation Testing System (FACTS™)
•           Allows managers to determine if employee fatigue contributed to the causation of an accident/incident or workplace error
•           Scientifically-validated tool for incident and accident investigation work
•           Store, analyze and benchmark all your fatigue risk data in a secure database
•           Capture the true cost and impact fatigue is having on your operation

It’s not just a way to be safer, every FRMS rule or standard requires that you evaluate fatigue risk and take active steps to:
•           Track fatigue
•           Manage it
•           And reduce incidents and errors caused by employee fatigue.

To do this efficiently and effectively requires specially-designed, scientifically-validated, software tools that not only test for work-rest rule compliance (Level 1) but also assess work schedule fatigue risk (Level 2) and evaluate fatigue as a potential cause in incidents and accidents (Level 3).

We can also help educate on fatigue risks and build a FRMS plan through our onsite workshop. To reach a compromise between operational constraints and shift worker productivity, the involvement of both labor and management is essential when developing and implementing a safe productive schedule. Moreover, the participation of a neutral – subject matter expert – has proved extremely beneficial in providing objectivity, technical, and facilitation support, as well as managing the conflicting interests to achieve an acceptable compromise. Management has a substantial opportunity to reduce the costs, risks and liabilities of extended hours operations. When we focus on employee involvement in the shift schedule and implement automated scheduling solutions to assist with the day-to-day management of the schedule, we can reduce fatigue, increase productivity, and contribute to good situation awareness practices.

On another note, API 755: As a result the 2005 BP Texas City incident, the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) recommends that you develop a Fatigue Risk Management System (FRMS) that, at a minimum, limits the hours and days of work and contains a methodology for your shift work schedules. We offer a program to that will educate your team on FRMS and fatigue management. We can examine your current schedule practices, interview shift workers, and recommend changes that will reduce the costs, risks and liabilities of extended hours operations. Our workshop includes the development of the Fatigue Risk Management System that is compliant with API 755 and provides guidance on the number of consecutive days that can be worked before a minimum amount of time off is required. This applies to 8, 10 and 12 hour shifts and addresses normal operations, outages and extended shifts.

Contact us today for a software demo.

During my time at home I have taken the Homeland Security training for Chemical-terrorism Vulnerability Information Authorized User Certification. I thought this was really good so I have had UCDS take the course and get the certificate. I also took the Chemical Security Awareness Training, so we can be sharper in this area for our customers. Finally, I have taken a study in mitigating potential terrorist attacks against buildings which fits into our Conceptual Design package.

Dave, Christi and Harry have been taking the impact of the travel for me, while I have been at home doing PT and writing my next book, which is going extremely well. I believe you will all be excited to get a copy when it is released. I have also been doing some interviews with Jim Montague for Control Magazine, one of my favorite reading journals.

We are working on the final stages of the new UCDS website. I have not seen it yet but Steve is very busy with Jason and his team. Our goal is to provide more useful and meaningful information to our clients and readers and demonstrate why we are the go to company for control rooms and associated services.

Dave and Christi are very busy doing staffing assessments for operator workload and quite a few PHMSA CRM audits, together with a large number of control room projects. Harry and team are still working through their mining project plant startup documentation, I think they are going to busy for a while, the customer is really happy, so life is good.

I recently talked to an individual who has been doing all the right things and doing them the right way and a single operator has derailed their whole project. He is not one of our customers but one of our affiliates seeking some advice. When I reviewed what their customer had done, he was doing a terrific job and he had done everything with the operations department behind him, however, in hindsight what he had not done was getting the vision sold to upper management. This is not uncommon; people work well in the lower levels within their organization and can identify with the needs of their people. They do a good job selling the vision to the rank and file but do not consider their management team. Then it only takes one to derail the whole effort, for the wrong reasons or funding to be redirector elsewhere.

We have suggested many times to our customers that before taking on a Human Factor solution they must really understand what they are doing and why they are doing it. As we consider control room projects, they can be the control room itself, the control system replacement or specific updates to the control system such as a new HMI or HP HMI, rationalization of the alarm management system.

We have for a number of years encompassed these under the umbrella topic of Situation Awareness and we recommend every customer participate in our Situation Awareness Workshop which can be one, two or three days in length. Over three days we go into a lot of detail and obviously with just one day we do a very simple overview, which often is sufficient for the savvy customer.

What we are doing in these workshops is demonstrating why the current industrial practices using traditional colorful DCS displays, and lots and lots of alarms does not work, and how many customers like Texaco Pembroke, BP Texas City and Esso Longford and many others have gotten themselves into big trouble.

Many customers believe they understand Situation Awareness, but when challenged they have a very poor understanding of the topic and have never read any Human Factors books on the topic. I have a couple of favorites; one is Mica Endsley’s book – Designing for Situation Awareness an approach to User Centered Design. This is an extremely good book and everyone in our industry should read about the Demons of Situation Awareness.

James Reason has two books one called simply Human Error and the other again one of my favorite books to read over and over again is “Managing the Risks of Organizational Accidents” which is the result of poor Situation Awareness and compromising Situation Awareness through the Demon’s Mica describes.

While these books are good they are not specifically targeted at the processing industry so Doug Rothenberg my old friend from the ASM Consortium day’s and myself are writing a book specifically for our industry.

He will be bringing his alarm management knowledge and many years of industrial service to this book, likewise I will be sharing my 40 plus years’ experience in industry, and my years as the Program Director of the ASM Consortium into the book. People don’t realize how much research was done in the initial years and how much of it has not been published yet.

It is unfortunate that the Consortium got distracted by productization and the research folk’s bias to a single technological solution. The customer’s got distracted by the promise of a silver bullet that has never materialized.

One of the most powerful lessons that was learned in the those early day’s was from the Effective Operations Practices that were observed around the world and addressing many of the bad practices in our industry that are clearly aligned with many of the Demons described in Mica’s book. Interesting how other industries like the aircraft industry have experienced similar issues but have fixed them, yet we have not learned the lessons and sought the solutions from them!

We have a couple of good books coming soon that will help to correct these problems. Also watch for the new website and social media we are currently working on. As for me I am walking again and getting ready to start travelling to your sites again and I look forward to catching up with many of you. I have a busy schedule planned for March, but now we have more staff this will free me up to get to more places and meet with more people.

If you are interested in any of our workshops or site visits please contact Steve Maddox or Sales Director, his contact details are available on the website.

In the last few months, I really limped around. I was at my worst at a trip in Chile, where I believe I finally ruptured my Achilles. I have to tell you though the customer was super patient and very kind and understanding to me and I want to thank him for all his support.

My last trip of the year was to Hawaii for an Alarm Management Gap Analysis and EEMUA style workshop for an Electrical Transmission customer who again showed me compassion and kindness and helped me get through a very busy week.

UCDS will be starting the year busy with most of the work being PHMSA CRM improvement projects. We now have experience of a pre-audit and the results of a PHMSA audit and post audit updates, and operator workload staffing studies in multiple industries. We still have a number of control room projects on our books and the training teams are continuing to do their excellent work.

I have a new respect for these folks as I see many of our customers struggling with these issues and in need of updating or producing good training materials. Many, in the past, have just gone to a training company and bought a training program which within a short timeframe has gotten out-of-date and is not meeting their needs. have added this to our business services solution because of the huge need across multiple industries and lack of a complete solution from a single supplier.

We have identified the Best Practices and the complete solution for our customers and we offer these individually or as part of a full control room solution which includes procedure development, High Performance Control Suite/Room HFE design, console design, Large Screen Display solutions, architectural services, fatigue mitigation and development of a FRMS, shift handover, PTW, Incident Investigation, MOC, MOOC, High Performance HMI design, alarm management and rationalization. With our partners, Lin & Associates, we can offer a complete solution for DCS or SCADA Systems system integration, control system specification and configuration, database development, DCS migration and many more services which together with our partner Production Excellence Inc. a full Operations Best Practices and Production Excellence studies. UCDS Inc. is the “go to” company for a complete control room solution.

The training program must contain certain elements to be successful:-

Selection – Identifying people who have the right aptitudes, experience and skills to do the job.

Training – deciding the best type of training to pass on any further knowledge and skills required. This may consist of initial classroom training, using table top exercises or simulators, on-the-job training (OJT).

Assessment – Selection above is an initial assessment, looking for formal qualifications, continuous improvement, reviewing lessons learned by asking questions and applying tests to discover a candidate’s strengths and weaknesses and understanding of what they have learned through observation, testing and confirming fitness for work.

Evaluation – assessing the success of the training system or making continuous improvements to ensure the training delivers workers who are competent and understand what to do in all operating modes especially Abnormal Operating Conditions (AOC) and Emergency Operations.

Selection of Operators

This is the very first requirement and unfortunately many of our customers have never addressed this issue. They may not have the right people in the right jobs. We often meet operators who do not desire to progress to the next position which may be another field job or it may include learning the computer DCS system to become a Console Operator or Process Control Operator or Control Room Operator or Controller dependent on your terminology.

What is often missing right up front is a clear understanding of the type of person required. For field operations we are often looking for the type of person that is “hands-on”, the type of person who likes mechanical things and tinkers with cars or other equipment. If the plan is to progress this person to the control room jobs, often the skill set is very different. In the control room, we are looking for people who are more cognitive in their thinking and are logical and like solving problems. Another requirement may be to progress people from this same pool to be Supervisors and again the skill sets of leadership and motivation are very different to the previous jobs. Can industry find people who are competent in all these positions? Well, remarkably they do but they have many failures along the way.

We help our customers understand how to resolve these difficult issues and establish a manning strategy based on needs which often changes year by year in our industry. This is easily illustrated when we consider a workforce with an average age of 40 years. These seasoned operators need little in the way of supervision, but when they retire or move on to new opportunities and are replaced by inexperienced workforce, the need for Supervision changes dramatically.

To be able to review a list of candidates against a list of ideal characteristics requires such a list be produced in the first place rather than someone looking for a copy of their mental model of an operator, which may have been relevant 20 or 30 years ago but in today’s modern world may be flawed.

Selection has had a lot of research studies and we have some very clear solutions that have been applied across industry and have proved to be very successful. We are always open to share our knowledge of this topic with our customers. One of our clients over the years been willing to share their experience of this topic and I have shared their PowerPoint with many customers to show that this is real and not just theory.

To be truly successful in this area we encourage our customers to complete a full manpower study. What is required is an understanding of the estimated number and type of staff required from information available, having knowledge of how many new starts will be required over a 10 year plan, understanding who within the organization will leave in the next few years, maybe retirement, promotion or something else, knowing who the potential candidates are who will be moving up in the organization and having a plan for them, looking at risk assessment reports, safety cases, company policies, “Best Practices”, future additions or plant closures to identify manning issues and change. Identifying the future manning needs seems very basic, but in my experience is rarely done. The only things that get considered are payroll budgets at the end of the year, not the needs of the organization. This often leads to organizations “running light”, which is having open positions and filling them with overtime. This is a major issue in North America and many organizations that run this way have no idea of the risk they expose themselves to. We now have a new fatigue initiative warning up in industry which is going to shed some significant light on this poor practice.

Assessment

Assessment is a quick test to confirm that the operator has an understanding of the training material. Notice I didn’t say the job position, these are often very different. Many companies avoid giving feedback because it is not part of the company/union culture. Regular feedback and encouragement during training is extremely important. All training should have testing and/or observations afterwards, it may need to include more than just skills, it should include hazard awareness, safety attitude and behavior. These are often topics that have been considered taboo because of favoritism and repercussions from both management and unions.

To be successful in this area, establishment of standards to measure progress against is extremely important. Management must ensure that training achieves its goals. If the goal is just to have a record of passing the training, this is very different from being competent to do the work.

During our staffing assessments we interview hundreds of operators and one of the most common statements we hear is, “the training system teaches you how to pass the test, not how to do the job”, this is left to OJT.

The next question is who does assessments? This should be split between trainers, management, supervision, other operators, SME’s and self-assessment. Again, we often hear from individuals who do not think themselves competent or capable to do specific jobs. They often tell us they do not think they have had sufficient exposure to doing the job with a mentor. The other big problem we witness in North America is progression skipping, often driven by demand and lack of resources; however, this leaves large holes in an operator’s education and experience.

As stated earlier, the requirements for Supervision change based on the number of experienced workers, with a large intake of new operators often requires additional Supervision to police, assess, and help these inexperienced workers. An organization needs to know when to change the balance between workers and Supervisors.

They say the proof is in the pudding! It is important to review accidents and the contribution of poor performing operators to the accident, to access competence of employees and how they respond to control major accident hazards.

Management of training records is not a simple task. It requires a thorough understanding of the objectives, plans, goals and achievements of the selection and training program. It is important that records of training received and due are tied to Roles & Responsibilities. All of this must be tied to performance. I like the Production Excellence initiative in the area that replaces these Roles & Responsibilities with Job Performance Profiles.

Evaluation

It is important to continually review the competence system; this has to be designed in as part of the whole system. The use of incident analysis to provide information on gaps in competence (ensure the system exists to report incidents and that the workforce feel comfortable using it). Sometimes independent assessment is very valuable, having a “cold eyes review”. It is also important to keep abreast of new developments and practices in training. For example, many have dismissed the use of simulators because of the high costs 10 year ago. Many companies are finding justification and a good ROI when investing in this technology today due to faster processors, easier software development and applications and the ease of maintenance of the more modern systems. I am also a big believer that much can be achieved by knowledgeable supervisors and engineers doing tabletop exercises.

It is to our industry’s shame that training is often the first casualty of a downturn in the industry and that training is still in the top 10 failures listed as common problems worldwide. Even after major initiatives such as Process Safety Management, Environmental Protection and more recently Human Factor Engineering Human Factors focus on training. We now have PHMSA making a significant push in the pipeline industry addressing training and learning from incidents, perhaps a major whole missing from these other initiatives.

Training

Training is often done by experienced operators (SME’s) who take what they know and turn it into a training course for other operators. What is often missing is a clear understanding of whether what has been done in the past is good and satisfactory. When a task analysis to identify training needs is done it often identifies that what was done in the past is not optimum and may not be the best policy to promote as the solution.

Answering questions like “what does the trainee need to learn (e.g. to control major accident hazards, to understand the processes and hazards and thus the consequences of their actions)? What skills are required to effectively do the job or task? This often makes the difference between that issue we identified that the training teaches an operator to pass the test not do the job!

Having a good understanding of what training is required for familiarization, for completing all the tasks what process, equipment, control training is required.

Understanding the training requirement for supplemental refresher training, designed for previously competent and knowledgably workers, or for a new employees, or if it is required because of plant or equipment changes.

The training may be related because of a change of job, or changes to the workforce or organization.

The needs for Health and Safety training is different from “skills” training. It important to teach infrequently used skills and knowledge (e.g. emergency, plant start-ups, error recovery, AOC’s).

UCDS, Inc. can assist you in developing training materials that are specific to your operating processes. These training materials include:

Process Overview Training

Process System Training

Console Strategy Training

Process Overview Training is designed to meet the requirements of OSHA’s Process Safety Management regulation. It provides the operator with an understanding of how the process functions, types of equipment used in the process, chemical and physical hazards, and how to respond to an emergency in the process.

Console Strategy Training provides the process control operator with an understanding of the objectives, strategies, and specific goals for operating plant processes and the impact their actions have on other units.

Process System Training is developed to provide operators with an understanding of how each process system works, the purpose and function of process equipment, system flows, control of major process variables, basic operational duties, and troubleshooting.

Training Development Process

Module Design

An on-site review of the training module design to determine the “look and feel” for each type of training module by reaching consensus on items such as learning objectives, level of detail, use of graphics, testing mechanisms, etc. Standardized templates are developed by UCDS to serve as a guidance document for our technical writers.

Data Collection

Data collection consists of interviews with subject matter experts; researching P&IDs, process descriptions, equipment information, etc. to gather the required technical information; and taking digital photos of equipment items to be incorporated into the training modules.

Training Module Development

Customer personnel prepare for the technical review by pre-reading the draft training module(s) and preparing comments/questions for the technical review. UCDS and key customer personnel will then formally review the draft training module(s) to ensure the technical accuracy and adequacy of the data presented. Proposed changes are discussed and, if appropriate, designated as an update to the training module. UCDS will capture the changes in a redline (track changes) document.

Finalization

UCDS personnel incorporate the approved technical review changes into the document – textual, graphics, photos, etc. The updated training module then receives a final edit and an electronic copy (MS WordR format) is returned to the customer for acceptance. A module acceptance sign-off form accompanies the module. The client will review the updated training module to ensure that all changes identified during the technical review were appropriately incorporated. If so, the module acceptance form is signed and a copy returned to UCDS to formalize the completion of the training module.

During the next few weeks keep an eye on our website as we will be launching a major upgrade to it and the launch of some new initiatives and resources. We plan on making more and more information available to our customers to help educate, provide in depth resources and tools for successful projects.

Our business model will be revealed which should help project managers put the pieces together for a successful project; we will be providing in-depth blogs and video resources. We have put together a powerful and knowledgably team, and have partnered with likeminded companies who share our values.

Over the years, I have witnessed or been involved in correcting some very poor designs and we have to ask why these exist. I have concluded that some was because of lack of standards and guidance in the industry. We are trying to change this by our commitment to both IEC Standards and ISA Standards; we dedicated a significant amount of our personal time to these organizations.

I have also observed that customers sometimes do not check the credentials and experience of consultants. I remember when I first arrived in the States from the UK over 21 years ago, I was shocked to see industry hiring nuclear experts to solve Process Safety Management Issues, people who had never worked a day in the processing industry and had no real hands on experience. Some of those people were experts in their own areas of expertise and picked up and learned very fast and made a contribution but many made some very basic mistakes.

Today, I see people designing control rooms who have no Engineering discipline or qualifications, no experience of the industry, no Human Factor training and these folks are contributing to these poor designs.

Project Managers or Purchasing Departments are selecting these folks based on price not skills and that is a very dangerous practice, especially in an industry that has demonstrated the impact of Human Error associated with Situation Awareness and Control Room Design and the designs of HMI, Alarms Systems, and Permit Systems etc.

We have seen the impact of poor human factors in the Texas City Disaster, Esso Longford, Texaco Pembroke, Shell Stanlow, and many more. All of our (UCDS Inc.) consultants have years of experience in the processing industry and I encourage you to read our qualification and experience. It is not just knowledge of the building, or knowledge of furniture, or knowledge of chemicals, or operations, it is much more.

I will have 45 years’ experience this year, scary! I have worked in multiple industries. I started my career as an Apprentice Electrical Fitter for Imperial Chemical Industries Ltd. in the UK. By the time I was 21, I had won the ICI top award “Fleck Award” and was offered either a Supervisor position or a job in the Electrical Design Office as a Designer. I got my qualifications in Electrical Power/Utilities & Electronic Engineering, one of the first electronic qualifications. I worked my way from Draughtsman Designer to Assistant Engineer, Design Electrical & Instrument Engineer, and Chief Instrument/Electrical Engineer to Computer Section Manager in a company that only had eyes for the top percentiles from Oxford and Cambridge University students. I was in charge of the whole of ICI Teesside Operations Process Control Systems.

After a long and significant career in ICI, I left in 1992 to join Honeywell and became the founder and Program Director of the ASM Consortium. I was a Senior Engineering Fellow with Honeywell for nearly 10 years then I formed my own company in 2000, User Centered Design Services and have worked in control room all around the world, in different industries. I know operations inside out, I know management systems, I know process control and have built graphics, rationalized alarm systems on many systems.

I consider myself very qualified to do what I do, to offer a very broad range of services around control rooms and field operations. I have been hired by major companies and their legal teams as an expert witness many times.

I have hired extremely well qualified consultants with both the qualifications and the experience to provide a best in class services. I have made solid relationships/partnerships with some of the best consultants and companies in the World.

I am ready to take on any size project anywhere in the world and in any industry that does similar operations. As a consultant, I have had many years in Petrochemical,Refining, Pulp & Paper, Power and Transmission and Distribution, Mining – Oil Sands, Coal, Nichol, Aluminum and Copper, Pharmaceutical, Iron & Steel, Carbon, Offshore, FPSO’s, Pipeline and I am sure some I have forgotten.

Call today and let us know how we can help you. All our contact details are available on the website.

We had a great time at Sedona, AZ at our AGM and planning for next year.  Melinda, husband and three girls joined us for an evening.  The twins dominated. So cute.

I have had a busy month with a visit to Sweeny, Texas for a High Performance HMI workshop.  I was recently in Hawaii working on Alarm Management for the local electric company.  We are looking into Transmission and Distribution alarm problems.

The weather in Hawaii was very nice, and I got to stay at the Hilton Hawaii Village.  My daughter was very jealous, so I sent her lots of photos. No sign of the Hawaii 50 stars or I would really have been in the dog house.

We are heading for the end of the year; we have had an incredible year with broken records all around, more control rooms, HMI, Workload Studies, etc.  We hired another new team member, Christi, who started this week.  UCDS is anticipating another incredible year.

Next year, we are launching a new program with additional services and complete solutions.  We are prepared to be the go to company for control room advice.

I am also putting some samples together of Best Practices in Shift Change, Fatigue and Shift Work and Operations Excellence.  We are doing a major upgrade to our website and our marketing arm.

We have a goal to double our work in Europe and Australia next year, we are focusing our attention on operations excellence.

UCDS would like to take this opportunity to wish all our customers and friends a very Merry Christmas and a prosperous New Year.

I have recently spoken at a couple of big events.  I was at the Emerson User Group where I presented a paper on HMI design.  It covered why we need to consider task analysis and not rely on using just P&IDs as the basis for screen designs. I demonstrated the power of the High Performance HMI and how the use of task analysis can provide insight into what should be on a display, avoiding many of the issues found today with information scattered across multiple screens.  After presenting my paper, I joined a panel of Experts to debate the topic.  Many customers had a lot of very good questions on this topic.

I was also invited to the Yokogawa User Group to give a Keynote address.  Again, I shared how to get a ROI when implementing High Performance HMI.  Control Magazine was there and did a wonderful review of my presentation, which is available as a link in the events section of our website.  We are making these presentations available to you upon request.  If you are interested, please e-mail Steve at SMaddox@mycontrolroom.com.

My keynote address was disrupted at the end by the hotel alarms; everyone thought I had staged it as a prop as I was just talking about the topic, so everyone ignored the alarm, Ha!  Well, we got through it and everyone got the message, we evacuated the hotel and all was fine.

We continue to be involved in a good number of new control room projects.  I see many customers struggling with what to put on Large Screen Displays (LSD), and what technology to use.  So, UCDS is rolling out more information and advice on this topic.

Some of our customers have asked us to help them prepare for a CRM audit.  We did a good job identifying some gaps in the customer’s plans and predicted areas PHMSA would issue violations against.  We are going to be helping resolve some of these gaps and avoid the harsh fines being imposed.  The regulator is giving these customers just 30 days to resolve violations.  The fines are quite high at $30,000 per day and a maximum of $1MM.

I am pleased to reveal that UCDS is hiring another Senior Consultant.  Christi Taylor will be joining us in December.  Christi was one of our previous customers who has confidence in us and has jumped at the chance to join us.  She will be initially involved in staffing studies as we use our proven methodology to estimate operator workload.  She will also be leading our Management of Organizational Change Studies.

Over the next year, she will be getting up to speed with our Staffing Methodology, MOOC, Alarm Management, HP HMI initiatives and Control Room Design.  Next year, we are launching a major new initiative on control room design.  We now have the capability to provide a complete solution including architectural services, project management, documentation and operator and control engineer training.

This month we celebrate Thanksgiving and I know I have a lot to be thankful for, and want to thank God and my customers for the best year ever.

Many Americans this Thanksgiving will have some deep reflections on the tragedy going on in our wonderful world today.  The families living in fear and terror in the Middle East, we pray for peace, patience and understanding.  We pray for the distressed people living in the Northeast who are still suffering from their ordeal of the horrific storm that turned their world literally upside down.  Several of our projects have been put on hold due to these storms.

We think of many of our friends who lost everything in the downturn.  I think of my great friend John who is one of the most talent salesmen I know, who lost his job, his house and has been really going through hard times.  But one thing that cannot be damped down is his spirit and his determination to go forward.  He has pride in his Country and has an open love for God.  I know at this hard time he will be celebrating with Thanksgiving and holding onto all that is good.  He will be thinking of greater days and reflecting on what hardships the founders of this great land went through, how they endured and how they succeeded and became great.

He too demonstrates strength through hardship, I am thankful he is my friend and I know he will one day look back on this time and reflect as Thomas Chisholm the great Hymn writer wrote at the age of 75, “My income has not been large at any time due to impaired health in the earlier years which has followed me on until now.  Although I must not fail to record here the unfailing faithfulness of a covenant-keeping God and that He has given me many wonderful displays of His providing care, for which I am filled with astonishing gratefulness.”

I too can testify of this grace, I too have been through hard times and can testify how blessed I am, I give thanks for each of my employees (friends), for my customers (friends), and for the people we work alongside and interact with.

For all you who read this blog on a regular basis, thank you for your interest, for your consideration.  Happy Thanksgiving and may you too be blessed.  None of us know what the future will bring, but when we work together we can achieve great things.  This year we have participated in some very successful projects and I am very proud to have been part of the solution.  I am especially grateful to Harvey Ivy of Southern Company who has achieved great things and for his willingness to share this success with some of our other customers.  Harvey you are a great man and I am very pleased to have worked with you.