China releases industry standard “Guidelines for chemical process safety management” 
On August 21,2021, the Department of Safety Supervision and Administration of Hazardous Chemicals, Ministry of Emergency Management of China released the draft of industry standard “Guidelines for chemical process safety management” and started collecting comments. This standard is the revised version of “Guidelines for process safety management of petrochemical corporations” (AQ/3034-2010). The current standard (AQ/3034-2010) stipulates the safety management elements and requirements for petrochemical corporations. The revision was made in accordance with the requirements of relevant policies. And the main amendments are as follows.
Expansion of application scope
The current standard (AQ/3034-2010) is only applied to petrochemical corporations, while in the revised standard, hazardous chemical storage corporations are also added into the application scope.
Amendments and expansion of safety management elements
The current standard (AQ/3034-2010) stipulates 12 safety management elements, such as process safety information, training, process risk analysis, pre-startup safety review, operation rules, machine integrity, operation permits, contractor management, change management, emergency management, process accident management, compliance review. In the revised standard, 8 new elements such as safety leadership, safety production responsibility system, safety production compliance management, installation safety planning and design, safety instruments management, safety management of major hazards, intrinsic safety and safety culture are newly added, the management elements become 20 in total. In addition, it also stipulates that strengthening the safety management responsibilities of corporate managers and establishing corporate safety management system in process safety management.
Along with the expansion of management elements, the 12 previous safety management elements in the current standard have also been revised based on the actual production status and the latest management requirements, and the management targets and contents have also been updated. For example, “process safety information” was changed to “safety production information management”, the process production information management system and management procedures have been added to the management requirements of process safety information. In addition, “training” was changed to “education/training/capacity building”, and in order to guarantee the effect of education and training, a request of testing the training effect of workers is added.
For the original text of the above “Guidelines”, please refer to the following URL (in simplified Chinese).
https://www.mem.gov.cn/gk/zfxxgkpt/fdzdgknr/202108/t20210827_396933.shtml
