The American Society of Safety Engineers (ASSE) is an independent nonprofit professional organization with more than 34,000 professional members worldwide.
The ASSE’s mission is to foster the technical, scientific, managerial and ethical knowledge, skills and competency of health, safety and environment (HSE) professionals for the protection of people, property and the environment. The Middle East Chapter (ASSE-MEC) was established in 1982 and has held several conferences and technical meetings in the Gulf region. These events have attracted many international speakers, a variety of exhibitors and a large number of attendees. The broad range of subjects addressed, the sharing and dissemination of knowledge, and the resulting discussions made previous conferences a recognized success. This encouraged ASSE-MEC to organize its 12th conference, from November 19 to 23, 2017, in the Kingdom of Bahrain.
																		

			
																			The 12th ASSE-MEC Professional Development Conference& Exhibition aims to achieve the following objectives:

1. Highlight the emerging HSE challenges facing the industry and society worldwide and in the Middle East.
2. Share the innovative solutions and approaches adopted to deal with these challenges among attendees and learn from each other’s experience.
3. Present an opportunity to network with other experienced professionals working in fields relevant to the participant’s area of practice.
4. Show and demonstrate the latest industry SHE products, services and activities in the region.

																		

																			The industry and the public in this region and around the world are currently facing an increasing number of emerging challenges to maintaining HSE protection standards. The objective of this conference is to present the latest innovative approaches being developed to deal with these challenges, and share solutions that enable the industry to continue its essential operations while maintaining the highest level of HSE standards. Recent events highlight some of the challenges facing the industry such as: the growing concern of the public and governments about the impact of major incidents on safety and the environment;
the high costs and financial liabilities associated with incidents; tighter regulations and stronger environmental requirements; the ever-increasing number of road accidents and high fatality rates; the growing concern over security issues in industrial facilities; cyber security and information protection; and aging  infrastructure and its impact on safety. The conference covers all aspects of HSE related to the process industries (i.e., oil, gas, chemical and petrochemical
industries) as well as the public. The following are examples of issues that will be covered during the conference:

1. Risk Management:
• Growing reliance on risk assessments as a decision making tool.
• Public perception of safety and cultural impacts on risk assessments.
• Operational safety and real-time monitoring/measurement of risk.
• Growing use of Computational Fluid Dynamics analysis in risk and safety assessments
• Enterprise risk.

2. Process Safety:
• Process and plant safety.
• Aging infrastructure and its impact on safety.
• Post-accident management and emergency response plan (ERP) activation challenges.
• Emergency response and disaster management.
• Pipeline safety and risk management in highly populated areas.
• Land planning and management of public encroachment on industrial facilities.

3. Security:
• IT security and information protections from cyber-attacks; its impact on safety/security.
• Security of chemical storage facilities.
• Facility security and protection from third-party impacts.

4. Safety Leadership:
• Safety economics.
• Safety culture and effective leadership.
• Legislative advancement, compliance and best practices.
• Sustainable safety performance.

5. Environment and Health:
• Pollution and hazardous waste management in highly industrialized areas.
• Workplace safety and health: ergonomics, proper ventilation, A/C arrangement, extreme temperatures in the workplace, deficiency of essential vitamins 
(e.g., B12 and D), open space office challenges, etc.
• Environmental challenges of new economic activities in the region (e.g., plans to invest more in downstream/ petrochemical industries, comparison between the environmental situation and international standards, etc.)
• Carcinogen control.

6. Special Topics:
• Transportation and traffic safety.
• Aviation safety.
• Fire prevention and enforcement of building codes.
• CO2 process safety and economies in the Gulf region.
• Best practices for sharing lessons learned from incidents.
• Contractor safety.
• Chemical laboratory safety.
											
																		

																				On successful completion of the conference, the participant will receive an attendance certificate from American Society of Safety Engineers.