Assessment of Safety Management Systems of Major Hazard Sites. Key Points and Conclusions

The safety management system is now considered a central component of modern process safety management. With the entering into force of the Seveso II Directive , the EU Member States have ever since been required to ensure that the operator of an establishment falling under the requirements of the Directive draws up a policy for the prevention of major accidents. Public authorities are required to carry out inspections of the establishments, including the site’s organizational and managerial systems, and this latter responsibility is normally executed through an audit of the SMS. Auditing the SMS is a significant challenge for authority inspectors for a number of reasons. In particular, even when a logical audit system has been well-defined by authorities, substantial questions remain concerning how far to carry the logic, how to recognize where important gaps are present, how to be confident that implementation in practice with management claims, etc. For this reason, a workshop for Seveso inspectors on this topic was organized in Fulda, Germany in 2010 to share knowledge and experience among inspectors for use in benchmarking good practice in inspection and control of SMS demonstrations. This document summarizes the most important observations and conclusions emanating from these discussions. ; JRC.G.5 - Security technology assessment