Safety Governance

Qatar Steel has a robust safety governance structure that links top management to shop floor in a structured manner, with clear reporting lines and mechanisms. The purpose of the governance structure is to drive messages, concerns and progress from the bottom-up, and cascade decisions top-down while ensuring an effective process. The governance system is equipped with a set of leading and lagging KPI’s and dashboards to measure and monitor safety performance in an effective, structured and sustainable manner to drive decision making.

Process Safety Management (PSM) is the proactive application of management principles to a process for the prevention of loss of primary containment events of highly hazardous materials. PSM is a system for dealing with human performance in complicated systems that involve inherent risk. Process Safety involves the prevention of leaks, equipment malfunctions, over pressure, corrosion, metal fatigue, etc.

Process Safety Roadmap

Qatar Steel completed the initial stage of implementing Process Safety Management System and after voluntarily adopting the OSHA PSM Guidelines (29 CFR 1910.119). Qatar Steel has joined the Process Safety Management task team of the World Steel Association to network, benchmark, and align with industry best practices. Regular assessments were conducted throughout the year to monitor progress and compliance. Training interventions were also conducted and are planned for the immediate future to ensure competence amongst all stakeholders.

The major achievements for the PSM program to date are as follows:

• A Qualitative Risk Assessments/Hazard Identification (HAZID) review was conducted on the DR plants and associated gas facilities based on the Major Accident Hazard (MAH) scenarios.
• PSM awareness training session (full day) is conducted by the Process Safety Engineer for senior and intermediate
  level staff.
• A PSM functional committee was formed with representatives from each department (where PSM is applicable) and meets bi-monthly to plan, implement and monitor different process safety elements.
• Active participation in the QP-MIC PSM working group and World Steel Association PSM steering committee.
• Employee Participation in PSM Element Procedure (2.32.1.1.18.01), Management of Change (MOC) Procedure (2.32.1.1.14.01), Process Safety Information (PSI) Management Procedure (2.32.1.1.21.01), Pre-Startup Safety Review (PSSR) Procedure (2.32.2.1.21.01), and Process Hazard Analysis Review Procedure (2.32.1.1.21.01) has been rolled out.
• Inclusion of Tier-1, Tier-2, Tier-3 Process Safety Events (PSEs) in the Incident Tracking System.

2020 Highlights:

• A gap analysis was conducted in Q1 of 2020 and action items related to finding have been closed. The analysis showed 82% compliance with OSHA 14 elements PSM program. All recommendations were closed.
• Organized external PSM assessment by Qatar Gas Subject Matter Expert in Q4 of 2020 and by QP-MIC PSM working group in January 2021, which provided recommendations on process safety culture improvement and on individual Qatar Steel PSM elements respectively.
• The PSM roadmap has been established considering the major recommendation(s) coming out from the PSM external assessment. Actions have been identified based on the nature, efforts required and priority to ensure effective implementation.
• Common understanding about process safety of Qatar Steel staff will be evaluated in the future by conducting an opinion survey and an online PSM training module will be developed for all employees.