You Passed the Audit. So Why Are You Still at Risk?
Plant operators are getting better at compliance. So why do process safety incidents keep happening? Explore how dss+ helps organizations connect fragmented risk signals, validate critical controls, and build operational resilience before incidents occur.
So Why Are You Still at Risk?
Plant operators are getting better at compliance. So why do process safety incidents keep happening?
Over six days in May 2026, Garden Grove, California was on the brink of disaster. A 34,000 gallon tank containing the toxic and highly flammable liquid methyl methacrylate (MMA) was close to exploding due to overheating. More than 50,000 residents were forced to evacuate and, months later, $100 million in claims were filed.1
According to the local fire chief, the incident was unprecedented with no easy resolution. Emergency responders braced for the tank to either spill or explode, two scenarios poised to have devastating consequences for the immediate community.
Luckily, neither happened. Yet despite the crisis, and the millions of dollars required for cleanup, it was determined that plant operator GKN Aerospace, which makes cockpit windows and shields for military aircraft, had met the requirements of a lower-tier chemical inventory filing because MMA did not appear on federal or state lists of chemicals subject to the toughest accidental-release prevention rules. At the time of this writing, the Orange County DA has closed its criminal investigation without charges but is pursuing a civil resolution that includes a claims program of up to $100 million and a courtapproved, independently monitored safety plan.
A Compliance Disconnect
Chemical Industry operators have spent decades getting better at compliance. For example, according to the American Chemistry Council (ACC), between 2017 and 2025, ACC members reduced their Tier 1 process safety events by 24% by implementing a commitment to set process safety expectations, define accountability, and allocate resources to achieve performance expectations.2
Yet despite those efforts, major incidents keep happening. Between 2021 and 2025, reportable events increased roughly 60%, with events involving a serious injury or fatality likewise rising about 52%, according to the Chemical Safety Board.3
The GKN Aerospace incident shows a greater, and disturbing, trend. In another example, a massive explosion at the Nippon Dynawave Packaging plant in May 2026 led to multiple fatalities and extensive structural destruction in Washington.4 In Georgia, the US Chemical Safety Board reported that a corroded sprinkler system was at fault for triggering a toxic gas plume and mass evacuations at BioLab, a chemical manufacturing facility.5 And in North Carolina, a plastics and chemical recycling plant shuttered after the state discovered years of mishandling hazardous waste and potential benzene contamination.6
Safety Compliance is not Risk Reduction
Compliance to a minimum set of requirements is not the same as risk reduction. Even with rigorous safety systems in place, organizations often lack continuous visibility into operational risk across those systems. Worse, many do not review that risk routinely, and that is where disaster becomes possible. Worker and community safety are both vulnerable as a result.
Think of compliance this way: to get behind the wheel of our car, we are expected to comply with regulations, such as pass a driver’s exam to earn our license, submit our vehicle for inspection, and meet basic insurance requirements for that vehicle.
Yet none of those things fully insulate us from risk. Even though we followed every regulation, we may drive while tired, get temporarily blinded by the sun, or let passengers, our phone, or any number of factors distract us. Just because we are technically compliant, does not mean that all the risks of operating a motor vehicle have been mitigated.
Four Reasons Why Compliant Organizations End Up in Crisis
Compliant organizations put themselves at high risk due to four key reasons.
An operating culture that favors compliance over risk reduction. Organizations track hundreds of metrics, complete their audits, and close their action items, yet still miss the handful of degraded safeguards that could produce catastrophic loss. Passing an audit and managing risk are not the same, and treating them as interchangeable is exactly how a site ends up compliant on paper and in crisis in practice.
Point-in-time assessment replacing continuous Validation & Verification (V&V). A risk review captures a moment. But degradation doesn’t happen in moments. It accumulates across the gap between reviews, in the seized valve, the deferred maintenance ticket, and the permit application still sitting with the regulator. Operating risk accumulates the same way organizationally, both quietly and continuously, during the time that a point-in-time review isn’t watching. Static reviews are not built to catch that kind of slow accumulation.
Fragmented risk profiles create operating risk blind spots. When a site’s risk profile is mixed — mostly routine, with localized pockets of significant hazards — organizations can lose focus, or apply wrong risk principles to wrong parts of the operation. A uniform review process misses a non-uniform risk profile.
Barriers and mitigation plans are not continuously reviewed and updated. Risk mitigation is not simply a desktop exercise that gets documented and sits on a shelf until the next hazard review. It’s an operating discipline that has to hold up in the ordinary hours between incidents, not just on the day of the audit. Often, sites are not unaware of their risks, and often have in place documented barriers and mitigation processes. The gap is not knowledge — it is whether systems are actually maintained and, when called upon, are operating as designed every shift. When this doesn’t happen, disaster can strike.
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