Publications

EIGA’s series of Human Factor Safety Information sheets are intended to explore Human Factors specific to the industrial and medical gases industry, raise awareness on these issues, and provide guidance. Alarm management is an issue for any site or process where there is reliance on human response to an alarm to prevent or control incidents, as well as major accident hazards. Alarm management is relevant to: * simple sites as well as complex operating facilities; * sites with a small number of alarms, for example simple storage sites or cylinder filling site; * sites with a single control room with a DCS (distributed control system) such as an acetylene plant or stand-alone air separation plant; * Remote Operating Centres (ROC) from which multiple distant facilities are controlled. This Human Factors Safety Information sheet gives an overview of the various aspects to consider and provides an assessment checklist.

EIGA’s series of Human Factor Safety Information sheets are intended to explore Human Factors specific to the industrial and medical gases industry, raise awareness on these issues, and provide guidance. Communications are basically ‘messages’ which can be written, verbal or non-verbal. All messages need to be created, sent and then received. Human or technical problems at any of these stages may mean that the intended receiver of the message fails to take the right action. The quality of communications influences and reflects the company’s safety culture. Companies use many different types of communications for a variety of purposes, some examples are listed below. Important messages are often communicated in several ways to re-enforce and remind of the content. This Human Factors Safety Information sheet gives an overview of the various aspects to consider and provides an assessment checklist. Although the Human Factors Safety Information sheets are aimed primarily at supervisors and managers, they may be of benefit to others who work within our industry.

Plant managers and employees do everything they can to stop emergency situations such as fires or leaks from happening, but emergencies are still possible on any plant. The plant should have the necessary emergency plans and resources in place: designated workspaces, equipment and people organised to manage the potential emergencies so as to reduce harm to employees and public and damage to facilities.

EIGA’s series of Human Factor Safety Information sheets are intended to explore Human Factors specific to the industrial and medical gases industry, raise awareness on these issues, and provide guidance. Maintenance errors, failing to perform a task or performing it incorrectly during routine testing, checking, servicing or breakdown repair, can result in equipment malfunction or in an incident causing damage to plant or harm to people or to the environment. Human errors and violations in servicing and repair tasks have many of the same root causes as errors in other types of task. However, with maintenance, a fault introduced into the system by human error today might have no effect for several months and then cause a sudden unexpected hazardous breakdown or incident. This Human Factors Safety Information sheet gives an overview of the various aspects to consider and provides an assessment checklist.

EIGA’s series of Human Factor Safety Information sheets are intended to explore Human Factors specific to the industrial gases industry, raise awareness on these issues, and provide guidance. Human factors in the design and effectiveness of procedures focuses on what makes a procedure effective and on how writing and maintaining well designed procedures can ensure consistency and that everyone has the same basic level of information. They are a key element of a safety management system and an important training tool. Poor procedures can be a reason for people not following recommended actions. This Human Factors Safety Information sheet gives an overview of the various aspects to consider and provides an assessment checklist.

EIGA’s series of Human Factor Safety Information sheets are intended to explore Human Factors specific to the industrial gases industry, raise awareness on these issues, and provide guidance. Human factors in incident investigation focuses on the management system failures and human failures that can make people lose control over hazards. To prevent or reduce the chance of such failures, we have to know what the failures are and what causes them. This human factors safety information sheet gives an overview of the various aspects to consider and provides an assessment checklist and guidance on some tools to assist.

EIGA’s series of Human Factor Safety Information sheets are intended to explore Human Factors specific to the industrial gases industry, raise awareness on these issues, and provide guidance. This human factors safety information sheet gives an overview of the various aspects to consider on training and competence of individuals and provides an assessment checklist. Although the Human Factors Safety Information sheets are aimed primarily at supervisors and managers, they may be of benefit to others who work within our industry.

Within the EIGA library, there are many documents that deal with avoiding incidents through the application of proper design standards, operating procedures and safety management systems. This document is the first in the series of Human Factor Safety Information sheets which are intended to: · explore the Human Factors specific to the industrial gases industry, · raise awareness on these issues, and · provide guidance. In some cases, these information sheets demonstrate how and where Human Factors are already addressed and included in existing documented best practice and guidance. Although the Human Factors Safety Information sheets are aimed primarily at supervisors and managers, they may be of benefit to others who work within our industry.

This Safety Information is intended to remind EIGA Members of the precautions that need to be taken when carrying out pressure testing. Attention is drawn to a number of items that should be considered when carrying out a pressure test including personnel protection, risk assessments and having written procedures in place

Several incidents have recently been reported to EIGA that have highlighted the importance to conduct appropriate risk analysis for the process of cleaning cylinder neck threads and to take appropriate precautions. Be aware that cleaning by using a fast-rotating iron brush will most likely induce enough ignition power to initialise an instant flash fire in an oxidising atmosphere