Influence of the safety management system on leak frequency

Analysis of the distribution of leak causes shows that there is a significant proportion of leaks that can be attributed to "human error". This term covers

• non-compliance with procedures (e.g. failure to follow a hose assembly procedure);

• inadequate procedures that do not effectively prevent the incident due to poor risk assessment (e.g. insufficient air line sweeping before a restart phase);

• operational errors (e.g. closing a valve that should remain open).

To confirm the above, the breakdown of "root causes" of major accidents, as reported following analysis of the MARS database, is shown...