A 30-year operations, maintenance, and reliability veteran has laid out five concrete priorities that he says senior leaders and plant managers must hold to keep process safety intact across the refining industry.

Speaking with downstream editor Robert Brelsford on the Oil & Gas Journal ReEnterprised podcast, Joe Barnes, principal of Barnes' Engineering Consultants, named the priorities directly: maintain strong operating procedures and management-of-change practices; audit lockout/tagout procedures routinely; train operators and supervisors effectively; and prevent deferred maintenance, particularly on critical equipment.

The fifth priority cuts across all of them. Barnes stressed leadership visibility in the field, urging executives and plant managers to engage regularly with operating personnel and to understand the condition of equipment and processes firsthand rather than from reports.

Profitability versus protection

The conversation returned repeatedly to the tension between profitability, market pressure, and the investment required to operate safely. Barnes argued that strong financial performance should support spending on equipment, maintenance, training, and people — not encourage short-term decisions that quietly increase risk.

He addressed the decisions refinery managers face during tight cycles: evaluating efficiency measures, staffing changes, maintenance deferrals, turnaround modifications, and capital reductions. His position is that process safety and personal safety must remain central to each of those calls, not treated as variables to trade against savings.

Proving the system works

Barnes and Brelsford also examined how a facility can demonstrate that its process safety systems function in practice rather than on paper. Barnes pointed to dedicated internal audits, periodic third-party reviews, and disciplined corrective-action follow-through as the mechanisms that separate working programs from shelf documents.

He recommended building operator training around real-world incident scenarios. Investigation findings, he explained, can be converted into case-based exercises that help workers recognize hazards, assess risks, and develop the right responses before they return to the field. Periodic reviews of procedures, emergency-response plans, and process hazards round out the picture, ensuring documents stay current and effective as units and operating conditions change.

Making bad news welcome

On culture, Barnes argued that leaders must build an environment where employees and contractors feel comfortable reporting weak signals, near misses, and other bad news. That comfort only survives, he said, if management investigates reported concerns, responds visibly, and demonstrates that risk identification leads to action.

He outlined immediate steps for strengthening process safety culture: communicate clear and unwavering expectations, protect critical maintenance from budget raids, audit what matters, reward the right behaviors, and improve workers' understanding of process limits.

Closing caution

Barnes closed with three reminders for the industry. First, visible and consistent leadership matters more than periodic campaigns. Second, facilities should communicate lessons between sites rather than learning the same event twice. Third, process safety is a core operating requirement, not a temporary investment that ends when the budget cycle does.

He also described the role of Barnes' Engineering Consultants in developing training modules built from major incidents, and offered a final caution on technology: artificial intelligence and digital tools can improve operations, but human care, judgment, and decision-making remain essential to preventing major incidents.

The discussion is the second part of a two-part conversation on process safety management; Part I is available on the OGJ ReEnterprised podcast feed.

The watch item for refiners: whether the next turnaround season sees critical-equipment maintenance protected — or deferred — when margins tighten.