Safety management system for hazardous substance transportation based-on risk analysis

Abstract

The objective of this study is to develop a Safety Management System (SMS) for hazardous substance transportation. The selected case study company is a leading hazardous chemical transportation operator in Thailand, however, for the past two years the company experience persistently high accidents/incidents rate in its handling and delivery process. Primarily, with the help from the company management, the author was able to set up a SMS Working Team, comprising representatives from various departments of the company and the author. The SMS proposed in this study was developed based on using British Standard BS8800 (1996) as a reference model. The SMS working team conducted a gap analysis using checklist to determine the additional requirement to the current system. The proposed SMS is a system to identify, analyze and update all existing risks of on-going delivery operations and to reduce occurrence probability and mitigate the consequences of safety accidents/incidents through comprehensive risk analysis process. Next step is to conduct risk analysis on major severity on major severity avoidable accident/incident cases which occurred between January 2003 and December 2004. From brainstorming and Failure Mode and Effect Analysis (FMEA), recommended actions were proposed and some of which were adopted into revised policy and procedures by the SMS working team. The proposed recommended actions are carried out by the related officer to make sure that the acceptable risk level is eventually achieved. The implementation results of the proposed SMS and recommended actions may not clearly indicate that the proposed SMS and recommended actions significantly reduce the rate and financial impacts cause by major severity avoidable accident/incident, but with the SMS in place, accident/incident can now be track, identify and analyze, in order to reduce occurrence probability and mitigate the consequences of accidents/incidents.