Pooling knowledge and improving safety for contracted works at a large industrial park

Background: At a large chemical park maintenance is contracted by the major companies operating the plants to many small firms. The cultural and psychological isolation of contractor workers was recognized a root cause of severe accidents in the recent years. That problem is common in chemical industry.

Objective: The knowledge sharing has been assumed a good key to involve contractors and sub contractors in safety culture and contributing to injuries prevention. The selection of personal protective equipment PPE for the maintenance works has been taken as benchmark to demonstrate the adequateness of the proposed approach.

Method: To support plant operators, contractors and subcontractors in PPE discussion, a method has been developed. Its core is a knowledge-base, organized in an Ontology, as suitable for inferring decisions. By means of this tool all stakeholders have merged experience and information and find out the right PPE, to be provided, with adequate training and information package.

Results: PPE selection requires sound competencies about process and environmental hazards, including major accident, preventive and protective measures, maintenance activities. These pieces of knowledge previously fragmented among plant operators and contractors, have to be pooled, and used to find out the adequate PPE for a number of maintenance works.

Conclusions: The PPE selection is per se important, but it is also a good chance to break the contractors' isolation and involve them in safety objectives. Thus by pooling experience and practical knowledge, the common understanding of safety issues has been strengthened.