Development Of Process Safety Management System (PSMS) For Process Industries: Management of Change (MOC)

Although the industrial facilities are equipped with safety design and operated to be safe, clean and profitable, yet incidents continue to occur. One of the root causes of many major accidents in process industries is uncontrolled change of process information. One of the essential features in managing risk of a process safety accident is managing the element of management of change (MOC). MOC is important in ensuring changes in a process do not inadvertently initiate new hazards or unknowingly increase any risk of existing hazards. One of the established industrial standards to manage the MOC is Management of Change (MOC) element of Process Safety Management (PSM) 29 CFR 1910.119(l). At present, there are numerous techniques of managing MOC have been developed but none of the available techniques addresses the completeness or depth of assessment on MOC as according to PSM standard. This dissertation presents a structures technique to manage MOC that could fulfil with PSM CFR 1910.119(l). The technique provides organized strategies to manage and track information, documents, recommendations and corrective actions related to MOC using Process and Instrumentation Diagram (P&ID) as the foundation for its development. A computer database prototype system known as Management of Change Management System (MOC-MS) is built based on the developed concept. MOC-MS will assist end user to manage the MOC implementation efficiently and helps in identifying the gap that hinders MOC of PSM compliance. The results of this system provide guidelines on how to drive a well-scoped MOC that comply with PSM standard thus lowering the risk of a process safety accident.