Explosives Basis of Safety – BOS
By Andy Begg
This document is intended to give anyone who makes use of the BOS e-module and PowerPoint presentation on the Website the reason why Explosives BOS was first developed. It is important to understand that BOS was not conceived as an integral part of a safety management system - rather it was driven by the realization that it was missing from our systems. It was driven by the safety issues we were seeing on our day-to-day operations that were resulting in serious injuries and often deaths of our employees and damage to assets.
Today many SAFEX members will never have had experience - directly or indirectly - of a serious explosives incident and hopefully never will but if you do you will never forget it and it will change you. The implementation of a BOS programme will help ensure you do not need to suffer such an incident to treat explosives operations with the respect they require.
Why BOS and what is it ?
The BOS programme was first developed in 1994 in ICI Explosives. At that time Explosives was one of the international businesses in ICI and ICI was in the process of implementing the updated corporate Safety Management System (SMS) of 19 standards worldwide. The implementation required each business to report annually the level of compliance with the standards and the plans to improve compliance in the following year. Year-on-year all the businesses reported increasing levels of compliance which was positive. The Explosives business was no different in this improving compliance, but this was counter to what we were observing in the safety of our operations in regard to injuries to personnel due to explosion/fire and unsafe explosive conditions that were being found in audits, inspections and incident investigations. So, at one level – compliance with the Safety, Health & Environment (SHE) Policy requirements – we were doing well but at another level - the day-to-day safety of explosives operations on the plants – we were not improving.
Safety Management System and BOS
At the time part of my role as the International Operations Manager for the business was to conduct safety audits at our operations across the globe, to lead fatal incident investigation teams and review other incident investigations. I was supported by Sanjay Dayal from our plant in Gomia, India who was seconded to work with me. Together we reviewed the findings of these audits and incident investigations and came to the conclusion that we were seeing the same fundamental issues across the business – there was a lack of understanding or implementation of the simple safe practices that had been developed over the years in the explosives business. Maintenance personnel were not consistently following the simple practices of wiring and securing nuts and bolts, operators were not reporting damaged screens that were there to prevent foreign objects getting into the process, supervisors and managers did not know the need for these simple practices and often were unaware of safety critical controls on the plants they were responsible for - the list was large.
Unsafe explosive conditions that should have been obvious were not being recognized by personnel at all levels. This was consistent across the operations globally.
On the other hand, the same operations had detailed safety processes and procedures as required by the Corporate SHE Policy. We realised that our procedures and formal training for explosives operations did not go into the level of detail – albeit simple detail - required to ensure day to day safety. The fundamental basis of safety that keeps an operation safe was lacking or at best inadequate.
BOS was born
At the time we still had many experienced employees who had a career in the industry. They knew the safe practices as they had lived with them but rarely were these documented, filed and used for training and maintaining standards. Our sophisticated safety management system was missing this very important element and in a format that was easily understood by all personnel.
To address this, we decided we needed simple BOS documents for each of our main production lines from making the pure high explosive through to detonator loading, pouring cast boosters and so.
We had many employees with long memories and lots of practical experience in all explosives operations. Collectively they had a treasure chest of knowledge – but it was not collected anywhere and, in many cases not even formally recorded. We formulated a plan and discussed it with the CEO of the business and he gave us his full support. We would develop and implement an Explosives BOS system. We had discussions with Kelvin Consultants an external safety training group who had worked previously with ICI and together we structured the BOS system. There would be a BOS manual and the full training package that would be implemented across the business. It would be in simple terms and easy to read format. We would illustrate safety issues through information from incidents and videos. Implementation was mandatory. It would become part of the SMS. And so, BOS was born.
First step
We convened a group of the most experienced people in the business in a workshop at an off-site location in Canada. In total we had about 10 participants from our main operations centers in UK, India, Australia, South Africa and Canada. They were all operations or engineering personnel apart from one who was a hazards specialist. These were our “go to” people if there was a question about a particular technology or process – between them they had years of experience in all our explosives and processes from TNT, lead azide, pyrotechnics, NG, emulsions, PETN, black powder - - - and explosion hazards.
Our goal was to draft BOS documents for 16 processes – chosen as the ones we considered most important based on incident statistics over the years.
Each document had to capture the basic safety aspects of the process in simple language and format that could be read and understood by all employees. I drafted one for the manufacturing and cartridging of NG explosives as an example for the team.
The format was as below:
- Scope – what is the BOS for? PETN nitration/drying/granulation, emulsion explosives manufacture and cartridging, ….
- Operation characteristics – what are the operations, hazards - fire, explosion, deflagration??
- Sources if ignition - what are the sources of ignition in the plant and how can they arise? These may include friction, impact, static and heat (FISH) and may be plant specific.
- How are the sources of ignition controlled? This is where a knowledge of “good explosives practice” is really required. Examples will include conductive footwear, securing nuts/bolts, use of metal detector - - - the list of options is long.
- How are the consequences of ignition controlled? Examples include minimizing personnel present, remote operation, blast mounds, safety distances.
Challenge: 3 sides of A4 paper in 3 hours
The team split into small groups and each one was allocated 2 or 3 BOS documents – but the challenge was to try to draft each one on 3 sides of A4 paper and do it in 3 hours. One team member - a very experienced engineer - said this was impossible. He was adamant that such a brief document would be of no value – to him a BOS required a large technical manual. It was agreed he would leave the team – and so we were down by one. I think we had allowed a week for the team work. We got to work and over the following days we drafted the 16 key BOS documents. They were a bit longer than 3 pages and took a bit more than 3 hours each but we got there.
These draft documents were then sent to other experienced personnel across the business for review and edit as appropriate. Very few changes were made and the documents were formalized in the ICI Explosives Basis of Safety manual.
A BOS training module was then prepared – this contained the BOS Workbook, 2 videos to illustrate BOS including an exercise on actual plant situations and a trainer’s Workbook PowerPoint presentation and notes.
The training package and copies of the initial BOS manual containing the 16 BOS documents were sent to all our operations and implementation was mandatory. We knew that due to local differences in plant design, materials availability or even financial constraints there would need to be local variations in some of the controls – but the basic principles of BOS had to be complied with.
Within the ICI Explosives Business, BOS became an integral component of the Safety Management System.
Available to all members
Through SAFEX and with the support of Austin Powder, Orica and AEL, BOS is now available to all members.
There is an introduction to BOS on an e-module on the SAFEX website and we are now including a more detailed PowerPoint training presentation for members to use in local training, We also plan to collect examples on photos or videos that help illustrate BOS and FISH concepts for use by the members when running local training sessions.
Explosives BOS continues to be developed by those companies who have adopted it as part of their SMS but the basic principles are still the same – members need to understand FISH and how to manage it on their plants.
Using the PowerPoint presentation
The presentation is the most recent that I have used when doing workshop sessions on BOS. Feedback from participants stresses the value of the trainer or presenter being able to relate actual experience of the issues described and therefore, if possible, I would recommend before using the PP to substitute or supplement the examples with ones that may be more relevant to the participants.
BOS: Simple but effective
In case you are wondering why I have shown the old photograph at the start of this paper it is because this probably one of the first illustrations we have of a BOS control. If the operator falls asleep while controlling the NG nitrator temperature by hand he will fall off the one-legged stool so waking up but also stopping the glycerine flow. Simple but effective controls – that is the founding principle of BOS.