Keeping and Improving Process and Plant Safety Competence – What is Needed, What Should be Done?

Abstract

In March 2004 with the position paper “Maintaining and improving competence in safety engineering” of the DECHEMA/GVC Research Committee "Safety Engineering in Chemical Plants", an initiative came up against the tendency that more and more process and plant safety (PPS) orientated professorships turn to other more fashionable research topics. The Research Committee was concerned that PPS in both academic teaching and research could suffer a negative development - despite of its importance. In 2009 a corresponding Dutch initiative followed. To bring these both and other similar initiatives together, within the 8th European Congress of Chemical Engineering held in Berlin in September 2011 a two days special session on PPS competence was jointly organized by EFCE, ProcessNet and EPSC. All presentations and conclusions drawn by the organizers (the authors of this paper) are electronically available. The paper addresses the before mentioned initiatives, highlights views and results from the ECCE 8’s special session on PPS competence, and indicates steps necessary to be taken and recent developments.