AT-RISK BEHAVIOUR AND IMPROVEMENT STUDY IN CHEMICAL ENGINEERING LABORATORIES AT UNIVERSITI TEKNOLOGI PETRONAS

Students in chemical engineering laboratories could be exposed to not only physical hazards but also chemical hazards. Thus, procedures and guidelines dealing with hazardous chemicals are set as a foundation for laboratory safety. Occasionally, these procedures and guidelines are seen as applying only to some situations and not easily followed in all operations. As a result, sometimes injuries, accidents or even fatalities happen due to students violating laboratory safety rules. Violation of laboratory safety rules is students’ behavioural issue. In industries, organisation tackles the behavioural issues by implementing Behaviour Based Safety (BBS) technique to identify and control at-risk behaviours. The technique is proved successful in reducing the injury rate of workers in many organisations. Nevertheless, some organisations cannot sustain the comprehensive participation required in BBS related activities. Alternatively, Online At-Risk Behaviour and Improvement System (e-ARBAIS) was introduced to overcome some of the BBS limitations. A modified e-ARBAIS methodology for the chemical engineering laboratory setting is introduced as a technique to identify, monitor and improve at-risk behaviours of undergraduate students known as Lab-ARBAIS. The Lab-ARBAIS maintains the original e-ARBAIS concept by using computer technology for data acquisition and analysis of at-risk behaviours observed. The analyzed observation feedback is posted in students’ e-Learning portal to allow the students to view and judge their safety practices in the laboratory. The Lab-ARBAIS program is implemented in chemical engineering laboratories at Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS for undergraduate class as a case study. The Lab-ARBAIS program receives positive students’ participation and gives significant improvements on frequent violated safety practices by students

Investigating awareness of emergency evacuation among construction workers

Emergency evacuation at construction site is challenging to be conducted due to its dynamic conditions and changing layout. This paper presents a survey work on awareness of emergency evacuation among construction workers. One construction site, P32-2 in Forest City, Johor Bahru is selected for the survey work. 300 workers participated in the survey work. The survey consists of seven questions related to demographic, education levels, and emergency evacuation training. Based on the feedbacks, many workers are male and are in the age group between 20 to 30 years old. The construction site has more general workers than others position. The principal employers or contractors prefer to hire individuals who have no proper education as general workers. There are three challenges for instilling safety awareness of emergency evacuation effectively, which are i) a large number of workers, ii) low level of education, and iii) no training and experience in the emergency evacuation at construction site. This paper did not study worker’s competency to perform the emergency evacuation. More research work on emergency evacuation at construction site should be conducted to improve safety of construction workers

Human factors and the use of simple language

Communication is one of the human factors. Even two individuals use the same language, either English or their mother tongue, it still has problems. The problems often occur due to the mismatch between expectations and actual communications in accomplishing a task or activity. The information should be communicated to the right individual at the right time using the correct codes, context, terminology, and words. The individual, who received the information, should attend to the sources of information and acknowledge it

Risk management of human and organizational factors for the escape and evacuation of offshore installations

Human and organizational factors, from the organizational level to the procedural and technical levels, can impact personnel. The human and organizational factors associated with personnel responses should be identified and managed in the emergency escape plan. This study presents a framework for human and organizational factors risk management in the escape and evacuation of offshore installations. The design and development of the framework are divided into four categories: a) identifying the presence of human and organizational factors in the safety barriers of escape and evacuation systems, b) estimating the probability of how human and organizational factors can affect personnel responses, c) combining the probabilities of personnel failing to respond with the consequential effects to assess risks, and d) applying a safety hierarchy to risk management of human and organizational factors in the escape and evacuation system. The first case study considered in this thesis examines the Macondo blowout, finding that insufficient emergency exercises, poor communication, impairment of personnel’s physical abilities due to unsafe conditions, and poor emergency preparedness planning contributed to the ineffectiveness of emergency escape and evacuation. In the second study, a Bayesian analysis is used to connect the human and organizational factors that affect every safety barrier. Using illustrative data, the study identifies the scheduled maintenance of alarm systems as a critical human and organizational factor for notifying personnel of emergencies on offshore installations. In the third study, personnel response to emergency alarms is shown to be affected by cold temperature, strong winds, and darkness during emergency scenarios, thereby impacting risk. The fourth study is used to complete the risk management framework of human and organizational factors. In the fourth study, a safety hierarchy consisting of inherent safety, engineering safety, and procedural safety is used in the risk management framework. Examples of engineering safety presented in the study are the use of lighting and dynamic exit signs in assisting personnel to escape from hazardous areas. In terms of procedural safety, personnel who received frequent practice of escape activities performed better than personnel without such practice. To conclude this study, the framework is identified as a practical tool for minimizing and managing human and organizational factors and risks present in the escape and evacuation of offshore installations

Investigations of Hydrodynamics of Fixed Bed Reactor: Counter-Current Flow

The residence time distribution (RTD) of a pilot plant scale packed bed reactor was studied in the present study using air - water system to investigate the effect various gas/liquid volumetric ratio on the residence time distribution. The ranges of air - water ratio is chosen to simulate the hydrogen/oil ratio of typical bench scale hydroprocessing units, noting the difference that might arise due to the different physical properties of theliquid. The experiments were conducted in counter-current mode and the effects of gas/liquid velocities on the hydrodynamics of the reactor were investigated. This study is done using the tracer method - specifically the pulse input method. The packed bed reactor used in this study is packed with8x8 mm Raschig rings. Results show that the increasing gas/liquid ratio increases the mean residence time. However, operating liquid hold-up and the value of Peclet number, which gives an indication to the degree of axial dispersion in the system, increase. Second moment analysis of the reactor, namely the variance of the system, shows a reduction in value with decreasing gas/liquid ratio suggesting wider liquid distribution through the system at lowgas flow rates. The discrepancies in experimental results suggested that there are conditions to be altered in order to eliminate the inconsistency

Developing a framework for assessing risks associated with human responses in emergency escape on offshore installations

This paper presents a framework for assessing and managing risks of personnel responding to emergencies requiring escape on offshore installations. Personnel’s action or response can be affected by human factors during the emergency escape. The framework has four categories: analyzing human factors in safety barriers for emergency escape, quantifying the failure probability of personnel’s response, assessing risks associated with personnel’s response, and managing the risk associated with personnel’s response. The first category requires defining and arranging safety barriers for emergency escape based on the Swiss cheese model. Both second and third categories calculate the probability of personnel failing to respond to emergency escape using Bayesian analysis. A safety hierarchy for managing risks associated with personnel’s response is introduced in the fourth category

Human factors issues in basic offshore survival and emergency training for platforms in tropical water

The presence of human factors in escape and evacuation on offshore installations has been studied by many researchers and engineers. The studies lack of analysis on human factors in the design of emergency equipment to increase chances of success during emergencies. This paper presents the survey on basic offshore safety and emergency training for individuals working on platforms in tropical water. The main objective of the research is to identify human factors issues faced by individuals performing escape and evacuation on offshore platforms in tropical water. A set of questionnaires was distributed to 16 individuals participating in the Tropical Basic Offshore Safety Induction and Emergency Training (T-BOSIET) at Terengganu Safety Training Centre, Kemaman

Analyzing human factors contributing to the explosion in Texas Tech University laboratory

This paper presents the use of human factor analysis and classification system (HFACS) for the explosion in the Texas Tech University laboratory. Human factor issues in the university laboratory were assessed according to four categories in HFACS: unsafe acts, precondition for unsafe acts, unsafe supervision, and organizational influences. The assessment showed that the student committed many errors due to precondition for unsafe acts, in particular no physical hazard evaluation required prior to conducting the experiment. Inadequate supervision in the university laboratory caused the presence of precondition for unsafe acts among students. The trajectory of human factor issues in the categories of unsafe acts, precondition for unsafe acts, and unsafe supervision pointed to the university’s organization. The human factor issues were analyzed according to three subcategories in organizational influences: resource management, organizational climate, and organizational process. The use of HFACS in the explosion in the Texas Tech University laboratory could demonstrate the sequence of failures and human factors leading to the accident