Bell Energy participated in the ASSE Middle East Chapter’s 12th Professional Development Conference and Exhibition held at Bahrain in November 2017.

The industry and the public in this region and around the world are currently facing an increasing number of emerging challenges to maintaining HSE protection standards. The objective of this conference was to present the latest innovative approaches being developed to deal with these challenges, and share solutions that enable the industry to continue its essential operations while maintaining the highest level of HSE standards. Recent events highlight some of the challenges facing the industry such as: the growing concern of the public and governments about the impact of major incidents on safety and the environment; the high costs and financial liabilities associated with incidents; tighter regulations and stronger environmental requirements; the ever-increasing number of road accidents and high fatality rates; the growing concern over security issues in industrial facilities; cyber security and information protection; and aging infrastructure and its impact on safety.

The conference covered wide array of aspects of HSE related to the process industries (i.e., oil, gas, chemical and petrochemical industries). Some of these topics are mentioned below:

• Growing reliance on risk assessments as a decision- making tool.
• Public perception of safety and cultural impacts on risk assessments.
• Operational safety and real-time monitoring/measurement of risk.
• Growing use of Computational Fluid Dynamics analysis in risk and safety assessments
• Enterprise risk.
• Process and plant safety.
• Aging infrastructure and its impact on safety.
• Post-accident management and emergency response plan (ERP) activation challenges.
• Emergency response and disaster management.
• Pipeline safety and risk management in highly populated areas.
• Land planning and management of public encroachment on industrial facilities.
• IT security and information protections from cyber-at- tacks; its impact on safety/security.
• Security of chemical storage facilities.
• Facility security and protection from third-party impacts.
• Safety economics.
• Safety culture and effective leadership.
• Legislative advancement, compliance and best practices.
• Sustainable safety performance.
• Pollution and hazardous waste management in highly industrialized areas.
• Workplace safety and health: ergonomics, proper ventilation, A/C arrangement, extreme temperatures in the workplace, deficiency of essential vitamins (e.g., B12 and D), open space office challenges, etc.
• Environmental challenges of new economic activities in the region (e.g., plans to invest more in downstream/ petrochemical industries, comparison between the environmental situation and international standards, etc.)
• Carcinogen control.
• Transportation and traffic safety.
• Aviation safety.
• Fire prevention and enforcement of building codes.
• CO2 process safety and economies in the Gulf region.
• Best practices for sharing lessons learned from incidents.
• Contractor safety.
• Chemical laboratory safety.