For high-risk endeavors, such as Ammonia Process Safety Management (PSM) program development and execution, understanding performance gaps and having the right teams in place are crucial.
Assurance that your internal team and external providers are fully equipped to protect your company, community, and stakeholders begins with understanding what supports team success: what your resources must do, how they perform, and what organizational attributes must be present. That knowledge can then be leveraged as a crucial foundation for managing your program's performance.
This article explores a distinctive approach, utilizing an Advanced Resourcing Model, to assess and build an integrated PSM team around unified principles.
Purpose: It’s About the Risk
An Advanced Resourcing Model is a collaborative framework designed to help companies identify, mitigate, and manage internal and external performance-related risks at the team level.
Once fully developed and customized, it can be used for:
- Benchmarking
- Defining and setting expectations within and between internal teams and external providers.
- Setting internal and external benchmarks for team and provider selection, ongoing performance management, and continuous improvement.
- Performance Assessment and Management
- Resource capability and capacity gap assessment that identifies internal strengths and external needs.
- Annual resource performance assessments tied to benchmarks and anchored to reliable sources of evidence.
- Team and Provider Selection
- External provider selection and procurement support, with minimum RFP requirements and evaluation metrics.
- Development of internal team selection criteria.
How Does it Work?
The Model is developed across two sections:
- Core Functions: What teams need to do well overall.
- Organizational Attributes: Verifiable business characteristics that meet your expectations and the program needs.
In practice, both sections are typically fulfilled with a proper balance of internal and external resources. Your Model can be used to determine which functions are performed by internal teams and which are outsourced to external providers. The Model, when used as a selection assessment tool, also helps ensure that external providers align with your business practices and meet program requirements.
The external provider, optimally managed by a single source, should seamlessly fill capability and capacity gaps without redundancies or inefficiencies.
Application
Below is a sample Advanced Resourcing Model (What to Look For), which provides a high-level outline of reasonable categories in each of the two sections. Using this summary, determine whether apparent PSM program gaps necessitate further consultation and review.
If gaps in your resources are present, the next step should be to develop a detailed working model for your organization. Your Model should follow these guidelines:
- The final working model is tailored to each company’s unique organizational structure and risk management protocols.
- Based on input from stakeholders and decision-makers.
- Data gathered through a discovery process, typically guided by an independent subject matter expert with full PSM lifecycle experience.
- Includes mapped “Sources of Evidence” for each category to anchor expectations to measurable key performance metrics.
- The Model should be evolutionary in nature, regularly assessed, and updated to address changing regulations, circumstances, or other variables.
When fully optimized for practical application, each Core Function and Organizational Attribute should be verifiable and measurable in a manner that validates the likelihood of achieving an optimal outcome.
Learn more about the full PSM Resourcing Model with sources of evidence.
What to Look For
Core Functions
Ideally, your external provider would be a single source that could collaboratively plan, develop, and implement advanced PSM program directives. Along with your internal teams, your provider should possess—and be able to verify—the necessary knowledge, skills, abilities, capacity, and experience to support you in all three of the following core functions.
- Consultative Guidance (Planning and Development):
- Program assessments and audits
- Risk analysis
- Compliance strategy and road mapping
- Conceptual solutions
- Regulatory and engineering alignment
- Project Management (Execution):
- Turnkey project solutions
- Planning
- Detailed PSM architecture and design
- Engineering
- Construction
- CQV
- Turnkey project solutions
- Program Management (Optimization):
- Documentation
- Communication
- Dashboards
- Scheduling
- Milestone management
- Training/LMS/Continuous improvement
- Performance management
Company Attributes
For most applications, at a minimum, the following eleven company attributes should be present to optimize the Core Functions outlined above. Internally, your company’s PSM team may already operate accordingly, or there may be gaps. As with the Core Functions, these should provide benchmarks for evaluating and improving resources.
It is essential these attributes are present and proven with your external program providers. Equally vital, their attributes should align with your company’s priorities and program needs.
Once defined, these attributes should be assessed through verifiable sources of evidence:
- Quality Management System (QMS)
Maintains an organization-wide quality management system ensuring consistency, accuracy, and reliability across all tasks and work products. The internal system must support repeatable delivery, disciplined recordkeeping, controlled documentation, and transparent accountability.
- Leadership Commitment and Governance for PSM Excellence
Demonstrates visible leadership involvement and a governance structure that elevates process safety performance to a core business priority. Includes defined roles, strategic oversight, and a culture grounded in ethics and transparency.
- Understanding of Context, Risk, and Stakeholder Requirements
Shows mastery in evaluating regulatory obligations, operational risks, and stakeholder expectations. The model incorporates risk and opportunity assessment into planning and decision-making.
- Integrated System Architecture and Document Control
Maintains a cohesive PSM system linking policies, procedures, PSI, workflows, and regulatory expectations. Demonstrates mastery in version control, traceability, and structured documentation.
- Structured Program Development Methodology for PSM
Uses a disciplined approach to evaluating, designing, and maturing programs. The methodology should be phased, evidence-driven, and designed to strengthen decision-making while reducing risk.
- Control of PSM-Critical Services
Manages external provider resources with structured qualification, technical expectations, oversight, and performance evaluation.
- Mechanical Integrity, MOC, and PSSR Capability
Builds and optimizes Mechanical Integrity systems tied to robust MOC and PSSR processes. Practices ensure safe startup and system reliability through disciplined workflows.
- Learning Management System (LMS)
Defines competencies, trains personnel, and verifies proficiency. Captures lessons learned, regulatory changes, and maintains high competence levels.
- Communication, Client Alignment, and Regulatory Interface
Ensures clarity and consistency in communication and alignment across internal and external teams, clients, and regulators.
- Performance Monitoring, Audits, and Management Review
Measures performance, identifies trends, and drives improvement through structured audits and management reviews.
- Nonconformance Management and Continual Improvement
Uses nonconformities as opportunities for improvement with root-cause analysis, corrective action, and learning.
Quick Check
Few providers can supply all core functions aligned with these attributes. To manage a corporate PSM program successfully, organizations must communicate and integrate with multiple providers effectively.
- What Core Functions are you doing in-house?
- Where are the Core Function gaps or redundancies?
- How many providers are managing your uncovered Core Functions?
- Do your providers have Organizational Attributes aligned with your company and program needs?
- Are workflows established that integrate and communicate data to allocate and deploy resources effectively?
- What are the stress points in your current system?
Any gaps, stress points, or redundancies may indicate the need for a system audit to uncover strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities for improvement.
Conclusion
An Advanced Resourcing Model clarifies what internal teams must deliver, what external providers must provide, and how both should collaborate to reduce risk and improve outcomes.
A team of internal and external resources that exhibit the necessary core functions and company attributes paves a clear path for optimal PSM program performance.
When each Core Function and Organizational Attribute is defined, validated, and managed through measurable sources of evidence, companies gain confidence their efforts are structured for long-term reliability and resilience.
Leaders who invest in developing and maintaining team performance position their organizations to operate with consistency, insight, and control across the full lifecycle of an advanced PSM program.
