PSM Software Showcases The Power Of A Holistic Risk Management Approach

PSM Software Showcases The Power Of A Holistic Risk Management Approach

A joint effort between the Verdantix operational excellence and EHS research practices, the recently published Green Quadrant: Process Safety Management Software 2023 assesses 15 process safety management (PSM) software vendors across their functional and technical capabilities in addition to market momentum criteria. Our benchmarking analysis encompassed three-hour software demos with participants, a 102-point factual questionnaire, interviews with 28 corporate buyers of PSM software and desk research. The vendors featured in this Green Quadrant are AVEVA, Cority, Enablon, GOARC, Hexagon, Ideagen DevonWay, Ideagen EHS, Intelex, Mangan Software Solutions, NiSoft, Prometheus Group, Sphera, TenForce, VelocityEHS and Yokogawa.

Lead analyst, Joe Lamming, summarized the study’s findings in three points:

1. PSM software unifies EHS, operations, engineering and maintenance.
   
   
2. Mobile app and connected worker capabilities are improving for real-time visibility.
   
   
3. System interoperability will be crucial for harnessing DataOps and GenAI.

Although PSM is a discipline that has existed within the oil and gas industry for decades, the PSM software market has seen a period of strong advancement in sophistication through internal vendor R&D and the acquisition of specialist solutions. In 2023, PSM software vendors provide integrated solutions that can analyse on-site risks in real time, manage operator safety during hazardous tasks and respond to critical events effectively. While not every element of PSM software is relevant to corporate buyers outside of oil and gas, certain functionality have the scope to drive huge value to current safety practices (see Verdantix Best Practices: Moving EHS To Dynamic Risk Management).

Implementing such PSM software functionality in one go is a large and resource-intensive undertaking for most firms. EHS leaders should consider the following PSM software approaches for their digitization roadmaps:

• Integrated control of work (CoW) solutions: CoW solutions digitize the work permit procedure and can drive safety and efficiency results across a wide range of industries such as manufacturing, mining and utilities. Leading PSM CoW offerings – from the likes of Enablon, Hexagon, Sphera and Yokogawa – integrate effectively with asset and maintenance data, provide interactive visualization of permit activity, and triage simultaneous operations based on risk.
  
  
• Digital risk visualizations: advanced operational risk visualizations allow firms to proactively analyse and account for fluctuations in risk across their site. Top offerings from Enablon, Prometheus and Sphera leverage incoming data from CoW, work orders and asset management systems to provide real-time risk views via bowtie or barrier risk models.
  
  
• Connected safety view: increasing connectivity between operational leads and frontline workers is central to the best PSM solutions. In addition to remote operator tools like CoW and mobile maintenance support, top PSM offerings from the likes of AVEVA and GOARC provide EHS leaders with a top-level overview of on-site operations in a configurable ‘control centre’ view.

For more information on process safety management, read the full Green Quadrant report here. To understand how operational risk – amongst other factors – is impacting the EHS function, view our EHS research here.