Working Groups are the engine room of Safer Together. They build our initiatives. Importantly, they also support companies right across our Industry to implement these initiatives. Champions for each Working Group are drawn from the Safety Leaders Group.
Working Groups are comprised of subject matter experts and user representatives from member companies to undertake specific work streams focused on the key safety issues facing our industry.
Process Safety Working Group
The Process Safety Working Group exists to improve industry management of Major Accident Hazards.
The emphasis of the Group is on raising awareness and understanding across the industry’s workforce that everyone has a role to play in managing process safety, by providing common tools that allow people to share learning and information.
The Group is working on the following projects and initiatives:
Major Accident Event Bowtie Review (2025 project)
A Bowtie can be an effective tool to assist in communicating process safety risks to the workforce and management teams. It provides a structured method for identifying and understanding risks. It helps to identify critical controls and encourages “Barrier Focused Thinking”.
However, Bowties are seen as complex tools and are underutilised by frontline teams to help manage major accident risks.
The objective of this project is to share develop industry guidance to help operationalise Bowties at frontline levels.
A Bowtie can be used for:
- Telling the story of Major Accident Event scenarios,
- Assurance Activity,
- Incident Investigation, and/or
- Risk Assessment for compromised critical barriers (e.g., safety-critical equipment).
In this project, the Process Safety Working Group proposes to focus on:
- Identifying industry needs in application of the bowtie tool, and maximising its use and potential.
- Identifying ‘typical’ Major Accident Event scenarios showing the relationship between Hazard, Threats, Prevention and Mitigation controls and consequences, and developing series of industry resources packs.
- Having a forum to share insights and learnings from how these MAE bowties are being operationalised and used by the frontline teams to increase MAE hazard awareness.
If you or your company would like to assist the PSWG with this project, contact us at: [email protected].
The Process Safety Working Group are also responsible for the following initiatives:
Contain It
Develop and roll out a transportable training programme to provide everyone working in our industry a basic understanding of major accident hazard events and the part individuals play in preventing a major accident. Learn more >
Process Safety Awareness
Develop materials tailored specifically for our Industry to use in educating our workforce, improving conversations and emphasising everyone’s role in process safety. Learn more >
Process Safety Metrics
Agree and share metrics for measuring process safety performance. Learn more >
Process Safety Incident Review
Communicate and share process safety incidents, learnings and key messages within the Queensland Natural Gas Exploration and Production Industry. Learn more >
To join our Process Safety Working Group, get in touch at [email protected].