Welcome to Sutton Technical Books. We provide books, ebooks, videos, operational excellence assessments and safety moments for managers, engineers and executives in the process and energy industries — covering chemicals, oil refining, offshore oil and gas and pipelines. Our goal is to provide practical information that will help you design and operate facilities that are safe, efficient and in compliance with rules and regulations.

We provide free Safety Moments, articles and videos. We also offer a range of books, ebooks and Safety Moment presentations for purchase.

Catalog

In addition to our books and ebooks from Science Direct we offer the following ebooks.

Safety Moment #59: In-Kind / Not In-Kind Change

Two recent Safety Moments have discussed the difficult, yet important, topic of defining “Change”. They are:

• Safety Moment #5: Management of Change — Defining Change and
• Safety Moment #58: From “change” to “Change”

In this Safety Moment — the third in the series — we review the distinction between “In-Kind” and “Not In-Kind” changes.

If you would are leading a discussion or meeting to do with the change in the context of Management of Change please note that we offer a PowerPoint presentation on the topic. This presentation can help you structure and organize the discussion.

Safety Moment Presentations

About six months ago we started publishing a weekly Safety Moment. As time permits, we will continue to do so. (This week’s missive is From “change” to “Change”.) Every so often we combine these Safety Moments into a single ebook — the first of which is 52 Process Safety Moments.

We are now pleased to introduce a supplement to these Safety Moments: Safety Moment Presentations. These are:

• PowerPoint presentations that you can use in your meetings and other work activities. (You need a recent copy of the PowerPoint program to open the file.)
• They are supplied in .pptx format. This allows you to edit them and to add your own material. (This is in line with the Process Safety Management philosophy of having a program that is performance-based and non-prescriptive.)
• They are priced at $9.50.

The first two of these Safety Moment Presentations are:

1. Operating Procedures — Defining Terms
2. Management of Change — Defining Change

Catalog information is available here.

Safety Moment #58: From “change” to “Change”

In an earlier Safety Moment (Safety Moment #5: Management of Change — Defining Change) we discussed some of the difficulties to do with defining the word “Change” in the context of Management of Change.

After all, change is a constant in any industrial operation. Process conditions, equipment items, personnel, contractors are changing all the time. So how do we know when a change is significant enough to trigger the need for implementing the Management of Change program? In other words, when is a “change” really a “Change”?

This is an important and difficult topic that we continue to discuss in this Safety Moment.

Ebook: 52 Process Safety Moments

Every week we publish a ‘Process Safety Moment’. They can be used to start a formal meeting or to provide training and information to those who design or operate a process or energy facility. We have collected the first fifty-two of these Process Safety Moments in an 187 page ebook.

For more information, including the Table of Contents  and a complimentary copy of the five page Introduction, please visit our 52 Process Safety Moments page. To purchase a copy, which is priced at $19.50, please follow this link.

Process Safety Assessments

We are working on a new series of ebooks. The series is called Process Safety Assessments.

All process safety programs require that formal audits be performed — typically every three years. These audits are a vital part of the program because, as they say, “There is always news about safety, and some of that news will be bad”. Audits are a crucial part of the process of identifying the bad news. However, formal audits do not always provide the insights that experts in a field can provide. That is where Assessments come in. They allow for subjectivity and opinions that would not normally be found in an audit.

To learn more, please visit our Process Safety Assessments page.

Safety Moment #56: Sinking Standards

This month is the 30 year anniversary of the Piper Alpha disaster. And, as to be expected, there have been many articles, blogs and web pages to do with that event, and the lessons that it continues to teach us. But there is an earlier maritime event which probably had a greater impact in its day than did Piper Alpha in ours. And that event was the sinking of the Titanic.

That event has given rise to many stories, movies and even some proverbs.

• Rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
• Until the moment she actually sinks, the Titanic is unsinkable. (Julia Hughes).
• Seize the moment. Remember all those women on the 'Titanic' who waved off the dessert cart. (Erma Bombeck).

One of the most important lessons is to do with the gradual erosion of safety standards that took place from the time of the building of the Great Eastern in 1858 to the sinking of the Titanic, 54 years later (which is why the picture at the head of the post is of the Great Eastern, not the Titanic).

Safety Moment #55: A Few More Process Safety Basics

The topic page Process Safety Management noted that the term ‘Process Safety Management’ can become somewhat diluted to the point where it can carry such a variety of meanings that it begins to lose any meaning. In response to this concern we suggested that we go back to basics, and that we should consider just those three words: Process, Safety and Management, and use them to frame the definition.

The post generated a considerable volume of thoughtful and useful responses, so we continue the theme of tightening down on the meaning of the phrase 'Process Safety Management' in Safety Moment #55: A Few More Process Safety Basics.

Blog: The PSM Report

In addition to the articles and safety moments that we publish at this site, we also have a blog entitled The PSM Report. We use it to report on current events and news that affects the process safety community.

Recent posts are:

• Chemical Safety Board Changes, and
• Revised BSEE Drilling