This infographic is breaking down the two halves of workplace safety that people often confuse - Occupational Safety and Process Safety.

 This infographic is breaking down the two halves of workplace safety that people often confuse - Occupational Safety and Process Safety.

They have different jobs, but the same end goal: Prevent major incidents.

1. Occupational Safety (People Safety)

This is what most people think of as "safety". It's about protecting the individual worker.

Focus: People - workers, contractors, visitors.

Key Areas: Things you can see in day-to-day work. Working at height, PPE, machine guarding, ergonomics, slips and trips, manual handling.

Goal: Prevent personal injury and ill health.

Scope: Day-to-day activities and workplace conditions.

Examples: Fall protection harness, wearing your helmet and gloves, following a safe work procedure for lifting.

Outcome: A healthy, injury-free workforce.

If someone slips in the workshop and breaks an arm, that's an occupational safety failure.

2. Process Safety (Asset & Process Safety)

This is about preventing the process itself from failing catastrophically. It's less visible, but higher consequence.

Focus: The process, equipment and containment systems - pipes, vessels, reactors, pipelines.

Key Areas: Process hazards, HAZOP [Hazard and Operability Study], PSM [Process Safety Management], operating limits, overpressure, leakage, fire and explosion, toxic release, LOPA [Layer of Protection Analysis].

Goal: Prevent loss of containment. In other words, keep hazardous materials inside the pipes and vessels where they belong.

Scope: How a process is designed, operated, maintained and changed.

Examples: Pressure relief valves, process alarms, interlocks that shut down a plant, defining and respecting Safe Operating Limits.

Outcome: Safe and reliable operation of the process.

If a storage tank overpressures and releases toxic gas that affects a whole community, that's a process safety failure.

The critical difference

You can have perfect occupational safety and still have a disaster.

This is the classic lesson from incidents like BP Texas City in 2005. The site had a very low personal injury rate, they were good with PPE and slips and trips, but process safety barriers were weak. The result was a catastrophic explosion with 15 fatalities.

Occupational safety protects people from the work. Process safety protects everyone from the hazards contained in the process.

How They Work Together

The bottom part of your image gets this right:

They are complementary, not competing. You need both.

Process Safety controls the hazard that comes from the process itself.

Occupational Safety protects the people who are exposed to those hazards.

Together they prevent injuries, major incidents and loss of life.

That last line sums it up: Safe People. Safe Process. A Safer Workplace!

If you use this for toolbox talks, a good way to test understanding is to ask your team: "Is this an occupational or process hazard?" - e.g., a missing handrail vs. a bypassed high-pressure alarm. One is about the person, the other is about containment. 🚥⛑️🦺🌡️🔥⚠️🗼🏗️🚧🚦🚨

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