Process Safety Site Assessment Program (PSSAP®): Do Repeat Assessments Help Assure Success?
Authors: Frazier C. M. , Meng R. D. 
Published: October 2023

The American Petroleum Institute (API) and the U.S. oil and natural gas industry prioritize protecting the health and safety of workers, contractors, and the communities in which we operate. For more the 100 years, API has led the development of industry standards, sharing lessons learned as well as the establishment of training and certification programs, all available worldwide.

The Process Site Assessment Program (PSSAP®) is a not-for-profit industry assessment program managed by API, focused on sites that refine or process hydrocarbons, that has conducted assessments around the world to help mature process safety programs for over a decade. In the past few years, several sites have been returning to API to have repeated assessments conducted at their sites, presenting a unique opportunity to benchmark their progress toward implementation of the 600+ General PSSAP requirements.

In PSSAP Assessments, independent expert assessors review a site’s process safety management system and implementation in the field. The assessors score each of 600+ requirements contained in the assessment protocols, creating benchmarking scores for that site. Upon completion, the site receives a benchmarking report that compares their PSSAP scores with other sites who have participated in the program. Benchmarking provides a unique opportunity to quantify the maturity of process safety programs and to compare them, in addition to measuring improvement since a site’s previous assessment. Scores on a section-by-section basis as well as overall performance have been analyzed to determine the amount of improvement as well as the likelihood of improvement, taking these eleven (11) sites as a representative sample.

Of the eleven (11) sites who have repeated a PSSAP General Assessment (of 175+ assessments total), the average time between assessments is 4.8 years, with an average improvement in scoring of 2.1%. Of those sites, only one (1) site saw a scoring decrease, and this was after nine (9) years between assessments. Removing this site, the statistics shift to the average time between assessments being 4.4 years, with an average improvement in scoring of 3.7%. In context, this may not seem like a large increase, but considering the time necessary to implement these programs, this is no small feat. API is encouraged by these results and is setting up more repeat assessments.

API has also discussed these findings with industry to determine the largest factors in whether a site is likely to improve in scoring on a repeated assessment. Critically, a site must have support from senior leadership that the assessment’s results should be acted upon. Additionally, a site’s culture and embracing of continuous improvement is the other most important aspect in determining if a site stands to benefit from a repeated assessment.

PSSAP also supports the API Energy Excellence® Program, a program that helps operators implement overarching management systems through thirteen (13) elements in support of operational excellence across all segments of operations. There are few, if any, published guidance documents on a management system framework that can be applied to all segments.