Inherently Safe Design A Common Sense Approach

Abstract

Most safety professionals associate Inherently Safer Design (ISD) with preliminary design of new processes. Indeed, in most cases, ISD concepts can have the greatest impacts in the early stages of process design. However, it is important to always consider ISD even for mature processes. In many instances processes can be made inherently safer with minor modifications. Mature processes can also become less inherently safe over time due to lack of maintenance of key systems or from or from out-of-date information. This paper presents a common sense approach for applying ISD techniques to mature processes and day-to-day operations.