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Safety and environmental standards for fuel storage sites
Final report
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Part 5 Operating with high reliability
organisations
251 The need for high reliability organisations follows from the recommendations relating to
technological improvements in hardware. Such improvements are vital in improving process
safety and environmental protection, but achieving their full benefit depends on human and
organisational factors such as the roles of operators, supervisors and managers.
MIIB Recommendation 19
The sector should work with the Competent Authority to prepare guidance and/or standards
on how to achieve a high reliability industry through placing emphasis on the assurance of
human and organisational factors in design, operation, maintenance, and testing. Of particular
importance are:
(a) understanding and defining the role and responsibilities of the control room operators
(including in automated systems) in ensuring safe transfer processes;
(b) providing suitable information and system interfaces for front line staff to enable them to
reliably detect, diagnose and respond to potential incidents;
(c) training, experience and competence assurance of staff for safety critical and environmental
protection activities;
(d) defining appropriate workload, staffing levels and working conditions for front line personnel;
(e) ensuring robust communications management within and between sites and contractors and
with operators of distribution systems and transmitting sites (such as refineries);
(f) prequalification auditing and operational monitoring of contractors’ capabilities to supply,
support and maintain high integrity equipment;
(g) providing effective standardised procedures for key activities in maintenance, testing, and
operations;
(h) clarifying arrangements for monitoring and supervision of control room staff; and
(i) effectively managing changes that impact on people, processes and equipment.
252 A high reliability organisation has been defined as one that produces product relatively error-
free over a long period of time. Two key attributes of high reliability organisations are that they:
have a chronic sense of unease, ie they lack any sense of complacency. For example, they
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do not assume that because they have not had an incident for ten years, one won’t happen
imminently;
make strong responses to weak signals, ie they set their threshold for intervening very low.
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If something doesn’t seem right, they are very likely to stop operations and investigate. This
means they accept a much higher level of ‘false alarms’ than is common in the process
industries.
253 The following factors should be addressed to achieve a high reliability organisation:
Clear understanding and definition of roles and responsibilities, and assurance of competence
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in those roles.
Effective control room design and ergonomics, as well as alarm systems, to allow front-line
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staff, particularly control room operators, to reliably detect, diagnose, and respond to potential
incidents.