Objective Analysis of Process Safety Audit Data with Microsoft Access

In developing systems for process safety, compliance audits provide essential verification that practices and procedures are developed and are effective for compliance. Data collected during compliance audits is often subjective and findings are descriptive in nature. Therefore, it is difficult to complete objective analysis of audit data across standards/procedures to surface systemic management system gaps and to compare site performance across a company. Complete analysis of process safety audit data is analogous to incident investigation causal factor assignment, data analysis, and cause elimination. This article describes a database solution that: 1. Provides a data collection method for compliance audits that allows for easy database input, thereby reducing overall data handling. 2. Structures process safety procedures by management system element so that these elements can be examined across various procedures. 3. Groups compliance audit findings by common types for Pareto analysis. The benefits of objective analysis of process safety audit data include more effective future audits and continuous process safety performance improvement at the site level. The presentation will include a brief review of the Microsoft Access database structure. (C) 2011 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Process Saf Prog 30: 221-231, 2011