Khalid Al Hemaidi, Chief Operating Officer for Health, Safety, Environment & Quality at Qatargas, during the 2019 Qatar Process Safety Symposium which opened in Doha yesterday. Pic: Abdul Basit/The Peninsula
The process safety performance of Qatargas, the world’s premier LNG company, is considered one of the best in the world, according to Khalid Al Hemaidi, Chief Operating Officer for Health, Safety, Environment, & Quality at Qatargas.
Process safety performance is defined as the absence of process safety incidents, particularly of severe incidents in operating systems and processes that handle hazardous substances; which cause fatalities, severe injuries, have significant impact on the public and the environment or cause significant financial losses.
Talking to The Peninsula on the sidelines of the 2019 Qatar Process Safety Symposium which opened here yesterday, Al-Hemaidi said, “We recognize that having safety as our core value will enhance overall supply chain, from production to the global market. We are very much ahead of the average in the industry. But the challenge is it’s not just a one-time achievement. It’s a journey. How do we sustain such performance is our focus. It takes collaboration to ensure we have sustainable and strong performance. And this symposium is a proactive approach to explore what are we missing and how do we always stay ahead of the game. With safety, we’re doing very well. But we can never be satisfied about our safety performance, because we always want to be in the leading seat, as we learn from others and share our knowledge and expertise”.
This year’s symposium revolves around the theme ‘Human error happens. How do we overcome the inevitable?’
Citing global data, Al Hemaidi said that over 70 percent of process incidents are attributed to human error. He added, “We cannot ignore this fact. How do we ensure awareness in all our organizations around human error and how can we prevent it. How do we ensure the knowledge and verification of the knowledge in the field. Because those in the frontline, they are the ones who are exposed to such incidents. And we have a role as leaders in the organizations to ensure the effectiveness of our process safety management”.
Speaking about Qatar’s safety standards, ConocoPhillips Qatar President Todd Creeger, said, “Qatar has world class systems, including its LNG facilities as well as the Qatar Petroleum operations. The country has very good safety performance historically, with very low accident frequency. And they always want to do better. That’s why we have events like this, to talk about how do we get better. To make sure we’re on the cutting edge of safety technology”.
Talking about how safety management at Qatargas has evolved over the years, Al Hemaidi also said, “We have strong and reliable work management system in place. But the human factor is the new challenge for the whole industry. We cannot control the human condition. But we can control the working environment. We minimize or eliminate the opportunity for human error.
This is the way we are improving. We also introduced over the past few years looking at near misses as a leading indicator…..”
