What If We Stopped Confusing Process Safety with Occupational Safety?

When Trish Kerin took to the stage at Safety on the Edge, her words didn’t just land, they reverberated.

I found myself nodding, wincing, even holding my breath at times. Because what she was describing, the repeated, catastrophic process safety failures we should have learned from, struck a nerve.

One line in particular stuck with me:

I’ve spent years working at the intersection of engineering and safety culture, but Trish’s keynote was a stark reminder: we’re still not drawing the line clearly enough between occupational safety and process safety, and people are dying because of it.

Process safety ≠ occupational safety

One of the most compelling metaphors Trish shared came from Professor Andrew Hopkins:

The same goes for engineering operations. Occupational safety is about slips, trips, falls. Process safety? That’s the systemic stuff. The explosions. The chemical releases. The mass casualty events.

As Trish put it:

History keeps repeating itself

Trish walked us through an unforgettable series of catastrophic events, Flixborough, Seveso, Bhopal, Chernobyl, Piper Alpha, Longford, Texas City, Macondo, Tianjin, Beirut, East Palestine.

Some I knew well. Others I had heard of, but never fully appreciated.

Each one, a lesson ignored.

Each one, a chilling reminder of what happens when systems fail and warnings go unheeded.

Weak signals and the platypus philosophy

Trish’s metaphor of the platypus still makes me smile and think.

You might think you’re looking at a duck. But if it’s got a venomous spur and a beaver tail… you’re in trouble.

Her point?

That’s the nature of weak signals, the faint alarm, the strange smell, the shift in vibration. They’re subtle. But for those who’ve worked long enough in plant settings, you know when something feels off.

And that’s where curiosity becomes our best defence.

Stop pretending we’re learning

The most honest moment of Trish’s keynote came during the Q&A.

Someone asked, “Why do we keep having these incidents?”

Trish didn’t flinch.

We tick boxes. We circulate bulletins. But organisational learning, the kind that prevents recurrence, takes time. It takes systems. And it takes humility.

So what can we do?

Here are three takeaways that stuck with me:

1. Differentiate safety disciplines clearly. Stop conflating injury rates with system integrity. They are not the same.

2. Foster a culture of curiosity. Encourage engineers to trust their instincts, reflect, and speak up about weak signals.

3. Build learning organisations. Reflection is not a luxury. It’s essential. We need to give space for teams to process what went wrong and what could have.

A final word from Trish

For me, that was the emotional centre of the talk. It reminded me why I got into this work in the first place.

Let’s not waste another crisis.

See Mark in Action!