Loading...

Please Wait...

This course is offered for live-streamed or face-to-face delivery. It is available for public or in-house delivery. Please be sure to select the “online” option during the registration process if you are interested in attending a live-streamed delivery.

Register Contact for In-house Training

Locations Dates Duration Tuition
Houston, TX April 16-17, 2024 2 days $1,725
Online (1:00pm EDT) July 16-19, 2024 4 half days $1,650
Houston, TX November 5-6, 2024 2 days $1,725

Course Description

The development and use of effective and user‑friendly operating and maintenance procedures in process facilities is essential for safe and efficient operations.  Written procedures are a requirement of OSHA’s process safety management (PSM) standard, CFR 1910.119. The operating procedures element of the PSM standard is one of the most frequently cited elements by OSHA year‑after‑year so there is room for improvement by many companies in how their procedures are developed and used.

Procedures can have as much impact on process safety as the process equipment. Indeed, poorly written or inadequately implemented procedures have caused or contributed to many process safety incidents.

Many companies assume their employees can write procedures simply by documenting what they do. However, this approach often produces ineffective procedures. There are much better approaches that can be used to write procedures that do not require any more work than the traditional “write what you do” approach. These better methods produce procedures that are much more effective and usable.

This course covers the fundamentals of writing effective procedures and teaches participants how to write new procedures and improve existing ones. Participants learn how to design and develop procedures according to established principles and best practices and how to write procedures for their users. Examples are used throughout the course to illustrate properly and improperly designed procedures.

The emphasis in the course is on operating and maintenance procedures but the course also applies to other facility procedures such as Safe Work Practices, Emergency Procedures, and Safety Procedures.

What you will learn:

  • Regulatory requirements for procedures
  • Principles for procedures development
  • Desirable characteristics for procedures
  • Guidelines for developing the contents of procedures
  • How to organize and structure procedures for clarity
  • How to write steps in a procedure to ensure understanding
  • How to format procedures to enhance usability
  • How to decide on the level of detail in a procedure for optimal use
  • How to select tasks for which procedures should be developed

Who Should Attend

Operations and maintenance personnel, process engineers, process safety personnel, and others who are responsible for the design and development of procedures.

Prerequisite

Experience in process operations, maintenance, or process safety is desirable. 

Credits

1.4 Continuing Education Credits (CEUs) or 14 Professional Development Hours (PDHs) are awarded.

All Courses