The “projectness” of MOC

The safety community, bolstered by the PSM regulations, has emphasized the importance of proper management of change, “MOC,” to ensure safe, reliable and economic operation of chemical plants, refineries and increasingly, on‐ and off‐shore pipelines, and installations. The majority of MOCs involve physical changes to facilities—a much smaller fraction of MOCs addresses procedure‐only changes, document‐only changes or organizational changes. Physical changes to facilities are implemented in different contexts such as maintenance work orders, project work orders, small capital projects, and large capital projects. Each of these contexts has its own notion of a “work process,” and the larger ones are very project‐centric. Changes to facilities always involve BOTH an MOC and a “work process.” Some sites emphasize the work process aspects, driven by the existence of Enterprise Resources Planning systems, and handle the MOC essential elements poorly. Other sites burden the MOC process with many capital‐projects aspects and create a very complex change management environment. Surely there must be a happy medium? This article analyzes data from case studies from actual implementation projects, identifies gaps and makes recommendations on the best practice for conjoining MOC and other work processes. © 2018 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Process Process Saf Prog 38:e12021, 2019