As the end of 2025 is fast approaching

As the end of 2025 is fast approaching, we’re reflecting on the training trends at our South Wales centre.

For quite some time we’ve observed a recurring knowledge gap among learners when discussing industrial incidents, accidents, and disasters in the process industry.

Since expanding our curriculum from mechanical joint integrity to include Human Performance and Human Factors, we now delve into these events more thoroughly using detailed case studies.

To quantify this, during 2025 we deliberately added a simple ‘yes/no’ question to our course evaluation/feedback forms this year. We asked a random selection of 380 learners from various process industries and job titles if they had ever heard of several notable industry disasters. Age profile was between 17 and 64.

Data collected between January 6th and October 6th confirms our suspicion: the lack of awareness about these critical events is, frankly, shocking.

The results are genuinely surprising. It’s truly incredible how many of these foundational events are lost to time, and I was shocked by the overall lack of awareness.

I recall the 1974 Flixborough disaster being drilled into us as a crucial safety lesson during my time as an apprentice at BP Chemicals in the 1990’s.
Is this still common practice? Are major industrial incidents still a mandatory topic in modern corporate training (for all employees)? It seems like a dangerous oversight if we allow the lessons of past disasters to be lost to time.

Here’s what we found (see image);