Emerging Skills Program — no certification exam
Process Safety Management
The fourteen elements, what each one is actually for, and why process safety failures are almost never a failure of the element that gets blamed.
Why this matters
The problem this solves
Occupational safety statistics tell you almost nothing about whether a plant is about to lose containment, and a good deal of the industry still manages the two as though they were one thing.
Process safety is barrier management applied to a facility: loss of primary containment as the event that matters, and a set of systems whose whole purpose is to keep the barriers between the hazard and the people. OSHA 1910.119 gives fourteen elements and CCPS Risk-Based Process Safety gives twenty; neither is a checklist, and treating either as one is the common failure.
This programme is the explainer. Where you want the full treatment — twenty sessions, HAZOP and LOPA worked through, PSI, MOC and PSSR built out — that is the live course, and it has its own dates and its own price.
Before you enrol
Is this a certification?
The short answer is no, and it is worth being explicit about it rather than leaving it to be discovered later.
What this programme gives you
- A structured explainer across all fourteen elements
- Bow-tie and barrier exercises on real loss-of-containment scenarios
- An indicator set you can propose against API RP 754
- An EIM certificate of completion
What it does not
- Not preparation for a certification exam — no certifying body examines PSM as a credential
- Not a CCPS, IChemE or NEBOSH qualification
- Not a HAZOP leader qualification — leading a study is its own training
- Not a substitute for your facility’s own PSM system or its regulatory obligations
If you need a recognised credential, start at certification exam preparation.
Who it's for
Roles this is built around
Process and operations engineers
Any level
Working inside a PSM system without having been taught the shape of it.
HSE professionals
Occupational background
Moving from personal safety into process safety, where the metrics behave differently.
Integrity and maintenance engineers
Any level
Owning mechanical integrity, which is the element their work actually sits inside.
What it covers
The outline
An outline, not a weighted Body of Knowledge — nobody publishes weights for a subject with no exam behind it.
Process safety vs occupational safety
Two different hazard classes, two different metrics, and the confusion that follows from merging them.
Loss of primary containment
The event everything else exists to prevent, and how barrier and bow-tie thinking frames it.
The frameworks
OSHA 1910.119’s fourteen elements against CCPS Risk-Based Process Safety, and where they diverge.
Hazard identification
HAZID, HAZOP and what-if — what each is good for, and what each reliably misses.
Layers of protection
LOPA, independent protection layers, and the link to IEC 61511 safety instrumented systems.
Mechanical integrity
The element that carries inspection, RBI and relief systems, and the one integrity engineers already live in.
Management of change
Why MOC appears in almost every major incident report, and what a working one looks like.
Measuring process safety
API RP 754 leading and lagging indicators, and why TRIR tells you nothing about this.
Outcomes
What you will be able to do
- Explain why process safety performance cannot be read from occupational safety statistics
- Map the fourteen OSHA elements onto how your own facility actually runs
- Choose an appropriate hazard identification technique for a given change or study
- Follow a bow-tie from threat through barriers to consequence, and find the weak barrier
- Recognise a management-of-change process that would not have caught the last near miss
- Select leading indicators under API RP 754 that would move before an incident, not after
Standards referenced
What the programme works from
| Standard | What we use it for | Note |
|---|---|---|
| OSHA 29 CFR 1910.119 | Process Safety Management of Highly Hazardous Chemicals | The fourteen elements |
| CCPS RBPS | Risk-Based Process Safety | The twenty-element alternative frame |
| API RP 754 | Process safety performance indicators | Leading and lagging measurement |
| IEC 61511 | Functional safety — safety instrumented systems | Where LOPA lands |
Also available live
Take this as a scheduled course
FAQs
Questions people ask first
The live course is a twenty-session programme that works through HAZOP, LOPA, PSI, MOC and PSSR in depth, with scheduled dates and a seat you book. This page is the shorter explainer, and it exists mainly because people kept arriving looking for a PSM certification.
Not in the sense API or AMPP certify inspectors. PSM is a regulatory framework, not a credential. There are related qualifications from other bodies, but none of them is what OSHA 1910.119 asks for — that is a facility obligation, not a personal one.
Running studies and having a working PSM system are different things. A facility can produce good HAZOPs and still fail on management of change, mechanical integrity or pre-startup review — and it is usually one of those three that appears in the incident report.
Questions about this programme?
Tell us your role and what you are trying to fix, and we will point you at the right material — or tell you honestly if this is not the one you need.