The Abnormal Situations Management (ASM) Consortium is a long-running and active research and development consortium of 13 companies and universities concerned about the negative effects of industrial plant incidents. The ASM Consortium has focused on improving abnormal situation management with a focus on the role of the operations personnel. From this perspective, the ASM Consortium has studied challenges to successful abnormal situation management and collaborated on the development of effective solutions spanning operations culture, organizational structure, management systems and use of technology to mitigate those challenges.

Understanding the root causes of abnormal situations in process industries is fundamental to eliminating and mitigating abnormal situations. This presentation will discuss research findings of the ASM Consortium on common problems and failure modes with an emphasis on the analysis of human factors in relation to incidents. We will share the top three causes identified in our research and discuss recommendations for companies to reduce abnormal situations.