Alarm management lessons aren’t being learnt, fears ABB

There is an industry-wide struggle to apply alarm management learning from previous major disasters says Joan Evans, a principal consultant in safety, at ABB Consulting.

Evans has recently examined a timeline of cases where poor alarm management has featured in significant environmental incidents, financial suffering and, more worryingly, the loss of life.

As examples from a timeline of process incidents over the past several decades, Evans contrasted the Texaco Milford Haven incident in 1994 where the HSE investigation raised the ‘excessive number of alarms’ and 15 years later Maersk Ngujima-Yin in 2009 where the DMA reported an ‘alarm overload in the control room’.

Evans said: "Effective alarm management should help prevent these incidents. Automation systems over-burdened with alarms that are not appropriately prioritised are frequently no better than a noisy distraction, and in some cases reduce the effectiveness of operator response in emergency situations.”

Forthcoming legislation and media spotlight is raising the stakes. The EU’s Seveso III Directive, coming into force in 2015, is the first primary EU legislation to cover alarm management.

Evans added: "We see the same issues happen again and again. Mistakes ought to be learnt from and should trigger improvement – they should not be repeated. We need to get this message across to avoid issues in the future.

"Exposure to these events through media consumption has never been higher with accidents played out on video sites and shared instantly on social media platforms – this adds increasing pressure on those responsible.”