A thorough update to the most popular book on process safety, with new case studies and exercises

What Went Wrong – Case Histories of Process Plant Disasters and How They Could Have Been Avoided 6th Edition is the latest edition of Trevor Kletz’s well-known book What Went Wrong? The comprehensive case history structure, editorial comments, and illustrations make this book a must-have for any professional in the chemical or process engineering industry. The content includes a complete analysis of the design, operational and managerial causes of process plant accidents and disasters, plus their aftermaths.

This new edition, completed revised and updated by Prof. Paul Amyotte, explicitly relates the technical causes of process incidents to management system deficiencies. It now covers Buncefield, Macondo and Texas City as well as Bhopal under inherently safer design. Case histories illustrate what went wrong and why it went wrong, and then guide readers in how to avoid similar tragedies and learn from the mistakes of others. Updated throughout and expanded, this sixth edition is the ultimate resource of experienced-based analysis and guidance for safety and loss prevention professionals.

Paul Amyotte

Since 2011 Dr. Paul Amyotte, P.Eng. has held the C.D. Howe Chair in Process Safety at Dalhousie University, where he is also a Professor of Chemical Engineering. Dr. Amyotte’s research and practice interests are in industrial safety and loss management, particularly in the areas of process safety and inherently safer design (ISD). He is an expert in the prevention and mitigation of dust explosions. He has written a book with us entitled An Introduction to Dust Explosions, and wrote the second edition of Process Plants: A Handbook for Inherently Safer Design in conjunction with Trevor Kletz.

He has published or presented approximately 300 research papers, and is the editor of the Journal of Loss Prevention in the Process Industries. He is also a Past-President of the Canadian Society for Chemical Engineering, Engineers Nova Scotia, and Engineers Canada. Dr. Amyotte leads a comprehensive research team of undergraduate and graduate students as well as postdoctoral fellows working to advance process safety practice worldwide.

Trevor Kletz

Trevor Kletz, OBE, D.Sc., F.Eng. (1922-2013), was a process safety consultant, and published more than a hundred papers and nine books on loss prevention and process safety, including most recently Lessons From Disaster: How Organizations Have No Memory and Accidents Recur and Computer Control and Human Error. He worked thirty-eight years with Imperial Chemical Industries Ltd., where he served as a production manager and safety adviser in the petrochemical division, also holding membership in the Department of Chemical Engineering at Loughborough University, Leicestershire, England. He most recently served as senior visiting research fellow at Loughborough University, and adjunct professor at the Mary Kay O’Connor Process Safety Center, Texas A&M University.

 Key process safety concepts such as inherently safer design, safety culture and recognition of warning signs, and

 Key process safety management system elements such as management of change.

 Extensive updates to the 2009 5th Edition.