Stronger together: How collaboration enhances safety

Advancing Process Safety (APS) is AFPM’s flagship safety program. AFPM, long with American Petroleum Institute (API), developed this groundbreaking program to promote collaboration across industries and to continuously improve process safety through data collection and opportunities to share experiences and knowledge. Created in 2012, this voluntary program has grown to include a suite of resources that facilitate the sharing of learnings and information.

• Walk the Line: AFPM's human performance program that provides operators with tools and resources to prevent common incidents and improve workplace performance and safety.
• The Process Safety Regional Networks: Seven regional information-sharing networks that enable process safety professionals to collaborate at the site and association levels to improve overall process safety performance.
• The Process Safety Site Assessment Program: This AFPM/API collaboration facilitates rigorous, independent third-party assessments of written programs and operations that help facilities prevent process safety events.
• Hazard Identification/Practice Sharing Subgroup: AFPM member group that develops hazard identification and practice share documents addressing common industry hazards and good industry practices.
• The Mechanical Integrity Subgroup: AFPM/API member group that develops resources to help facilities keep their equipment and systems working safely and reliably.
• The Human & Organizational Performance Subgroup: AFPM/API member group that develops information and tools to improve human performance in operations that aid in reducing the likelihood and consequences of human errors.
• Industry Learning & Outreach Subgroup: AFPM member group that gathers and analyzes industry data to identify opportunities for APS improvement while also hosting monthly webinars.

AFPM’s technical committees provide a forum for knowledge sharing and identifying opportunities and topics for sharing broadly at our conferences, webinars and other resources. These committees focus on various industry-critical areas, including manufacturing safety and health, immersive learning and training, reliability and maintenance planning, control and automation technology process technology, fluid catalytic cracking (FCC), hydroprocessing, coking, gasoline processes, sustainability technologies and hydrofluoric acid alkylation.

The AFPM Regional Networks play an essential role in bringing site-level practitioners together to network and share events, learnings and good practices. The regional networks—held in seven regions across the country—focus on process safety, occupational safety and hydrofluoric alkylation operations.

The FCC Committee develops resources for industry-based learnings from recent FCC incidents. This group develops webinars, conference sessions and FCC process safety documents. Most notably, the Committee delivers regionally based interactive and experiential one-day training workshops at operating sites throughout the United States.

The AFPM APS Program has developed a means to share important process safety information broadly with our members. Since the program’s beginning, hundreds of documents have been created to support AFPM members and include safety bulletins, a compilation of similar process safety incidents and their learnings, hazard ID documents that list hazard considerations for specific tasks and practice sharing documents provided by member companies for the benefit of improving site practices industrywide.

AFPM’s live events and webinars are thoughtfully designed to provide state-of-the-industry information in a dynamic and interactive format, encouraging connections between attendees, subject matter experts and exhibitors. Safety is a primary focus of several conferences each year, including the AFPM Safety Conference, Summit and Annual Meeting. In addition to live events, we host webinars throughout the year on a variety of technical and safety topics, including turnarounds, artificial intelligence, alarm management, alkylation, sustainability and unit reliability.