The Process Safety Professional. Part 4: Once Upon a Time

Trevor Kletz and Ian Sutton

In a recent post — That Would Be Telling — we noted that an important part of Trevor Kletz’s legacy was his ability to tell a story. The impact of his stories was made greater by the fact that so few process safety professionals do what he did. Most of us try to communicate with formal documents such as reports and slide presentations.

Professional writers suggest that a well-structured story has five elements:

1. Characters

2. Setting

3. Plot

4. Conflict

5. Resolution

Characters

Stories are about people. In the process industries we cannot generally reveal actual names and personal details for both ethical and legal reasons. However, we can often identify people using a job title such as “Operations Superintendent” or “Lead Instrument Engineer”. These titles usually give the reader enough information to visualize the persons involved, what their roles and responsibilities were likely to have been, and what authority they have in a given situation.