Practice 01 · Process & plant safety
Outsource execution. Retain accountability.
PPS outsourcing advisory is governance advice for operators that buy safety-critical process and plant safety work instead of performing it in house. It defines which activities can be externalized, who holds decision rights over the results, and what the operator must keep in order to remain the duty holder under Seveso III, OSHA PSM and BImSchG. It is for chemical, pharmaceutical and oil and gas operators whose liability does not move with the contract.
Across the process industries, safety expertise is increasingly bought rather than built. Assets grow more complex, qualified safety engineers grow scarcer, and the gap is filled with external consultants: HAZOP facilitators, SIL verification specialists, safety-case authors.
Treated as procurement, this looks efficient. Treated as governance, it exposes a problem most boards never see until something fails: outsourcing the execution of a safety task does not transfer accountability for its outcome. Under Seveso III, OSHA PSM and comparable regimes, the operator remains the sole duty holder, regardless of who did the work.
The risk moves into the space between what a vendor executes and what an operator still owns. We call this the grey zone. It is where most outsourced-safety failures originate — not in the technical work itself, but in the assumption that buying a report buys protection.
Three pressures converge on the executive carrying the duty of care: rising regulatory exposure, a shrinking internal bench unable to challenge external work, and a procurement model that rewards deliverables over outcomes. Left unmanaged, the organization becomes a blind customer, dependent on vendors it can no longer question.
The risk does not disappear when it is outsourced. It relocates.
Source: DJC three-layer accountability model, applied across chemical, pharmaceutical and energy operators.
We do not staff your safety function. We govern how you externalize it, so capability flows in without accountability flowing out. Four moves operationalize that distinction.
01
We classify each candidate activity against a three-layer model — execution (fully outsourceable), verification (shared), accountability (non-delegable) — so the boundary between the vendor’s doing and your owning is explicit before work begins, not litigated after an incident.
02
We build the decision-rights structure — who provides input data, who challenges assumptions, who formally accepts residual risk — and translate it into contract language that positions vendor outputs as advisory inputs, never as final decisions.
03
We bring discipline to how providers are evaluated, contracted and assured over time, shifting the relationship from vendor management to technical governance.
04
We help you retain the minimum internal expertise required to challenge external work intelligently. An organization that cannot explain the logic behind a vendor’s recommendation has already lost control of it.
Exhibit 1
The three-layer accountability model: only the first layer leaves the building.
Technical calculations, HAZOP facilitation, modeling, laboratory testing, drafting reports.
Provider
Fully outsourceable
Challenging assumptions, testing site-specific accuracy, accepting the deliverable as fit for use.
Shared
Governed handover
Accepting residual risk, maintaining safety barriers, holding the license to operate.
Operator only
Non-delegable
Source: DJC three-layer accountability model. Duty-holder position under Seveso III, OSHA PSM and BImSchG.
The output is not a staffing plan. It is a governance posture. Engagements produce five durable results.
Access to scarce safety expertise without carrying it permanently on the balance sheet.
A documented governance chain showing the duty holder exercised real oversight, not procurement theater.
The grey zone made visible, mapped and governed rather than left to emerge after an event.
Enough internal authority that you remain an intelligent customer rather than a blind one.
A structure that CEOs, operations leaders, procurement and legal can each see their role in.
Short answers to the three questions that open most conversations. The full set sits on the FAQ page.
Q
Operators in chemicals, pharmaceuticals and oil and gas that already buy safety-critical work, or are about to. The client is usually the executive who signs off residual risk: an operations or HSE director, a plant or site lead, or a board member carrying the license to operate.
Q
A classification of every externalized safety activity against the three accountability layers, a decision-rights and sign-off model, contract language that keeps vendor output advisory, a provider selection and assurance structure, and a defined internal capability you keep.
Q
No. Most engagements begin exactly there. We assess the current setup, map where accountability is ambiguous today, and rebuild the governance around the arrangements you already have.
Q
No. Seveso III, OSHA PSM and equivalent frameworks have analogues in most regulated jurisdictions. We work with operators in Europe and across Africa and the Middle East.
Most advisors frame outsourced safety as procurement. We frame it as governance, because under Seveso III, OSHA PSM and comparable regimes accountability cannot be delegated alongside the work.
That framing comes from having operated, not only advised. DJC is led by a principal with more than twenty years in senior process-safety and externalization roles inside global chemical and pharmaceutical operators, and certified under the German statutory regime that governs major-incident accountability.
The result is an advisory firm small enough to engage with judgment, and credentialed enough to challenge external work on its merits.
The work spans strategy design, statutory regulatory governance, and the technical safety analysis beneath it. Engagements reflect career experience in prior senior operator roles as well as work delivered through the firm.
Chemicals, pharmaceuticals, agrochemicals · global · outsourcing governance
Design and global rollout of a multi-year strategy to externalize process and plant safety services across modeling and technical safety, with the governance framework for engaging external partners. Adopted across the group’s regions and used as the internal reference model for externalizing safety-critical work. The program received the group’s Top Performance Award in 2021.
Process and plant safety · Asia, Europe, Latin America · provider evaluation
Formal tender processes with selection criteria built on internal quality and compliance standards rather than price, including GLP and ISO 17025 requirements, long- and short-listing, and pilot phases before award. Providers were onboarded on three continents inside a single governance model, with accountability for outcomes retained in house.
Pharmaceutical manufacturing · Germany · BImSchG
PHA and HAZOP programs, explosion protection and pressure-relief studies, statutory safety reports, and the regulatory interface on permitting and new requirements — including a compliance concept carried through extended negotiation with the permitting authority to approval.
Cases are anonymized. Full credentials and qualifications are on the leadership page; further cases on the experience page.
The model behind this practice: the three-layer accountability framework, the responsibility trap, and a governance playbook for leaders carrying the license to operate.
In the process industry, safety expertise is increasingly bought rather than built — yet with every outsourced safety project, an invisible risk grows: the grey zone.
Contact
A direct conversation is the fastest way to know whether your current vendor setup reduces risk or merely relocates it. We can begin with a governance assessment against the three-layer model.
