A Conversation with Peter Lodal of Eastman Chemical [On Location]

Douglas B. Clark

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Douglas Clark is a copywriter and speechwriter with a healthy appetite for all things digital. He has more than 15 years' agency and independent experience in corporate and marketing communication, and his clients come from diverse industries, specializing in anything from financial products and toothpaste to software for the visualization of computational fluid dynamics data. Among his clients are Accenture, American Express, Coca-Cola, Colgate-Palmolive, Hewlett-Packard, and Panasonic.

Between sessions at the 8th Global Congress for Process Safety in Houston, we sat down with Peter N. Lodal, technical fellow, Plant Protection Technical Services at Eastman Chemical Company, to hear his thoughts and advice for young engineers working in process safety. Check out his video in the panel at right to hear some great insights as well as an extraordinary example from Peter's own career that illustrates that the unexpected is bound to happen. Peter is also Eastman's representative to the Center for Chemical Process Safety (CCPS) Technical Steering Committee and serves as the chair of the CCPS Planning Committee. DOWNLOAD: You can read more about the incident and see more photos in this one-page PDF download.

Do you have a safety incident that tops Peter's surreal experience?

Comments

Submitted by Rich Byrnes (not verified) on Tue, 04/10/2012 - 18:42

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Fantastic discussion, thanks for posting. The challenge of running Safe & Profitable operations could not be stated better. The Hot air balloon illustration regarding hazard recognition, risk assessment & loss prevention effort is particularly interesting. Oddly enough my brother had a hot air balloon make an emergency landing in his front yard some years ago, the pilot was able to navigate around several houses and find an open spot to land. No injuries happy to say, however quite the unusual story. I would say the overall risk of hot air balloons impacting plant operations in general is low (unless you are next door to the State Fair each year), however these stories may have us rethinking what we say is “not a credible event” in our HAZOPs. There is a lot here for both old and young timers to digest, Peter thanks for the insights.