Overview

With significant experience operating hazardous plants and leading industry and regulatory bodies, Ken has a unique set of perspectives and advice for any engineer and leader concerned with process safety. 

The hazards that can destroy your business should be top of mind right through any organisation and yet they are not. The lack of danger signals means that organisations can get lulled into a false sense of security or simply just not recognise the risks/potential for catastrophe that exits in their activities.

Even in the UK which has one of the best records in the world for managing major accident hazards , these incidents are still happening. But these risks can be managed and the tool kit is there and freely available for businesses to use. The Control of Major Accident Hazards Strategic Forum , which I chair, has highlighted that making “good practices” into “common practices” is the main challenge to improving standards and raising performance. The information you need and the good practices to prevent a major accident hazard in your business are known. It is simply a question of applying them with sufficient rigour and consistency.

As you might expect, leadership is a vital element in delivering this change. Over the last ten years, a set of leadership principles and practices have been developed and tested. They have been forged out of painful learning from major incidents in the oil and chemical sectors. They are underwritten by industry and regulators. They are a great example of collaboration to help managing major accident hazards well. They have also been developed into an assessment tool that you could use to test your own organisations. The opportunity is there for everyone to freely use them and for them to make a difference in your business.

Getting leaders interested, curious and committed to managing these catastrophic risks is the focus for this talk as are the resources available for this journey.

Speakers

Ken Rivers, IChemE President

Ken is the President of the Institution of Chemical Engineers (IChemE). He chairs the UK's Control of Major Hazards (COMAH) Strategic Forum, which is the joint industry/regulator group tasked with raising standards and improving the effectiveness of major hazard legislation.

Ken's extensive international career included being CEO of Refining NZ and responsibility for Shell's UK refining and petrochemical operations. He is a past President of UK Petroleum Industry Association and chaired the joint industry/regulator task force in the wake of the Buncefield terminal explosion. He was one of the founding members of the New Zealand Business Leaders' Health and Safety Forum. More recently, he chaired the UK’s "Midstream Oil Sector Government and Industry Task Force", which considered ways of improving the resilience and viability of the UK refining and fuel import sectors following the recent government review.

Jon Prichard, IChemE CEO

Jon joined IChemE as its Chief Executive in early 2017.

In 2001, after 20 years in the British Army, Jon joined the staff of the Institution of Civil Engineers. He served initially as membership director and then as technical director. In 2007, he joined the construction consultancy High-Point Rendel as Resources Director and then in August 2010 took over as CEO of the Engineering Council.

Jon is a Chartered Engineer, a Chartered Environmentalist and a Fellow of both the Institution of Civil Engineers and the Institution of Royal Engineers. He is an Honorary Fellow of the Society for the Environment and a Fellow Chartered Engineer with the Royal Netherlands Society of Engineers.