CATCH hosted their Major Hazards Network on 2 November with over 20 delegates in person and joining online.  This was a special occasion as the group were saying goodbye to their current chair, David Hughes, and welcoming their new chair Dan Rawdin from SSE.  David chaired the first part of the meeting and welcomed our first speaker Gus Carroll, CEO & Co-Founder of Empirisys.

Gus presented an update of the COMAH Strategic Forum.  The forum seeks to drive strategic discussion on how regulators, industry, government and unions can work together to provide leadership and encourage continuous improvement in the inspection, management and control (including emergency preparedness and response) of major accident hazards across the onshore industries.  The group discussed some of the challenges facing the sector with skills shortages and hazards associated with emerging new technologies that require robust regulation.

The next speaker was Russell Page, Continuous Improvement Consultant with Haden Freeman CI.  Russell gave an engaging presentation on Process Safety Leadership and Safety Culture.  Russell outlined the typical features of a major process safety incident and what methods are available to managers and process safety leaders to address this in the workplace.  The importance of process confirmation was explored to help drive culture change.

After a break, Dan Rawdin introduced our last speaker, Oyinda Gunn, Principal Process Safety Engineer with AXIOM.  Oyinda gave a detailed overview of best practice in Consequence Modelling with great examples of how this approach can be applied to industrial situations and how sensitivity analysis can be used to focus leading factors.

David Talbot joined the meeting to present a gift and card to David Hughes and thanked him for all his years of support and advocacy for CATCH and his leadership and wisdom in running the Major Hazards Group.

The next meeting will be held on 7 March at CATCH.