Safety is my job
Mike Rantell works for Novartis Grimsby Ltd making active pharmaceutical ingredients. He graduated from Cambridge University in 1993 and is a member of the Institution (MIChemE) as well as a Professional Process Safety Engineer.
Mike, can you outline your current responsibilities?
As site lead in Process Safety my responsibilities encompass all aspects of process safety studies as well as leading audits of our management systems. I also led the 5 year review of the site’s COMAH Safety Report ensuring the right experts were involved.
On our site process safety is based on the CCPS 20 elements of PSM, ranging from compliance with standards to human factors. Keeping knowledgeable about current good practice is a key part of my role.
Is it possible for you to describe an average week?
It might include leading a team review of an existing HAZOP or Process Hazard Analysis. Often temporary plant modifications require a simpler task based risk analysis to ensure the change is fully assessed. I regularly interact with operations and engineering in order to ensure risk assessments are accurate and provide process safety expertise should near misses or incidents occur. Health & Safety Executive COMAH interventions come round relatively frequently which means most weeks we are preparing for a visit.
The most interesting parts of a job are when I’m learning something new, and in this role there’s always something new to learn. I’m lucky enough to be involved with cross-industry best practice groups, talking to fellow process safety experts and seeing how good practices are implemented in other industries and sectors.
Is there a project which you have been most pleased with?
Implementation of a human factors programme on site was interesting and satisfying. We visited a local COMAH site that had already implemented such a programme to understand the pitfalls. If too many critical tasks are defined then the system becomes very large and difficult to manage. The tasks were prioritised by scoring for vulnerability to error as well as criticality. This gave a clear line of sight from Hazard ID to critical steps in procedures to training and finally to competence observation.
How does your role contribute to society’s grand challenges?
We need to recognise that despite all the precautions risks cannot be reduced to zero. We have to ensure that the benefits of making products such as pharmaceuticals always far outweigh the risks to people. We can only do that by ensuring risks are As Low As Reasonably Practicable and that industry good practice is adopted.
What advice would you give to anyone considering Process Safety?
Being a member of the IChemE has given me a structure to base my career around, particularly when I moved into my current role. The professional process safety engineer certification scheme helped me to identifying where my strength and weaknesses were and what I needed to work on.