The Institution of Chemical Engineers (IChemE) Safety Centre and the Safety Institute of Australia will publish two new chapters in the Occupational Health and Safety Body of Knowledge next week.
The launch comes after 18 months of collaborative working, aimed at closing the knowledge gap between health and safety professionals and process safety engineers.
Completed by a cross discipline team of both IChemE Safety Centre (ISC) members and Safety Institute Australia (SIA) members, the chapters will be launched via an online webinar. They focus on process hazards in the chemical industries, and process safety management respectively.
The ISC and the SIA announced plans to work together in January 2016. They intended to close the knowledge gap between OHS professionals and engineers in the process industries to encourage better understanding, the sharing of best practice, and improve general safety at work.
There were 178 workplace safety incidents reported in Australia last year according to SafeWork Australia. Seventeen of these occurred in the process industries, which includes chemicals, oil and gas, pharmaceutical production and food production.
The chapters – Process Hazards (Chemical) and Managing Process Safety – will be launched online on 26 April.
IChemE Safety Centre Director, Trish Kerin hosts the launch with a webinar entitled An Introduction to Process Safety. This follows introductions from Australian National University Emeritus Professor Andrew Hopkins, IChemE Past President and Former Chair of the UK Health and Safety Executive, Dame Judith Hackitt, and OHS Body of Knowledge Process Safety Technical Panel Member, John Temby.
“The collaboration between ISC and SIA has been a positive step in closing the gap between process safety and more generalist health and safety roles,” said Kerin. “When this project was announced in January last year we set out to publish one chapter, and I’m delighted to announce that we will publish two next week.
“A basic knowledge of process safety is essential to improving your safety competencies more generally, whether you work in the process industries or not.”