David Whittle
Director of Process Safety Services; ABS Consulting
Mr. David Whittle is Director of Process Safety for ABS Consulting. He is also an instructor of numerous courses for ABS Consulting Training Services including Process Hazard Analysis (PHA) Leader (Course 110), Revalidating Process Hazard Analyses (Course 113), Advanced PHA Leadership (Course 114), and PSM/RMP Compliance Auditing (Course 101). In addition, he has been the lead instructor for the PHA revalidation course presented by AIChE. He has more over 30 years of experience in PHAs/revalidations, PSM/RMP compliance/program development/implementation, hazard analysis, LOPA/SIL analysis, system engineering, risk assessment, and economic evaluation for a range of domestic and international clients, including companies in the petroleum, petrochemical, chemical, manufacturing, pulp and paper, pharmaceutical, utilities, and other allied industries.
Throughout his career with ABS Consulting, he has led, reviewed, participated, and/or audited more than 2,000 PHAs and/or revalidations for a wide variety of industries, using various hazard analyses techniques (HAZOP, what-if, FMEA, checklists, etc.). In addition, he has been involved in a broad range of process safety and risk management activities, including PSM/RMP compliance auditing, program assessment, development, implementation, benchmarking, and RMPlan development and review.
He is the coauthor of the AIChE CCPS book entitled Revalidating Process Hazard Analyses. He was also a technical reviewer of the CCPS book entitled, Hazard Evaluation Procedures, Second Edition with Worked Examples, which is referenced in Appendix D of OSHA's PSM regulation (29 CFR 1910.119). He also authored and published several papers on the subject of PHAs and PHA revalidations, including Lessons Learned from HAZOP Analyses of HF Alkylation Units,Lessons Learned from HAZOP Analyses of Fluidized Catalytic Cracking Units, and How to Effectively Revalidate PHAs. He is also a coauthor of the publication API's Model Risk Management Program (RMP) Plan for Exploration and Production Facilities, which provides guidance for complying with EPA's risk management program (RMP) rule (40 CFR 68).
Before joining ABS Consulting and its predecessor companies, Mr. Whittle provided engineering support in several technical capacities for Exxon Company, U.S.A. (Exxon). Mr. Whittle received his Chemical Engineering degree from Vanderbilt University.