Bringing New Life to Process Safety

  <>Abstract:

Whilst risk cannot be eliminated, it can be better managed.  The world of Process Safety Management continues to evolve as organizations find better ways of managing risks. In the simplest form, managing the risk is to reducing inherent process risk to the tolerable level.

First step in managing risks is to identify source of Hazards and quantifying risk associated to Hazards. Traditionally organizations heavily rely on expert judgment and brainstorming methodologies like HAZOP for finding operational and design risks. In addition, quality of such analysis are directly related to the precision of assumptions and information from operation and maintenance of the equipment under control.

In this session we will explore how organizations are using new techniques such as dynamic risk visualization, cumulative risk techniques, operational risk assessments and cyber Hazop’s to advance the boundaries of process safety management.

This paper will explore how existing systems and data sources, risk visualization and intelligence techniques are being used to bring static process safety data to life. Flat “1 dimensional” information such as lists, forms and databases are now being transformed into “2 dimensional” dynamic information such as plot plans, barrier models, risk matrix, bow ties etc. that provide greater context of relationships between information. 

This information will resonate with engineers and technician who rather working with meaningful information of operation and maintenance systems instead of some abstract numbers and concepts that need extensive expertise in the reliability engineering.   

We also will look at how advances in Operational Risk Assessments and Cumulative Risk allow operators to determine in real time if the overall cumulative risk is tolerable before actions are taken, devices are removed from service, maintenance activities are deferred etc. In other words, leading indicators and metrics will be in disposal of operators to proactively facilitate decision making for managing risk. This could avoid incidents that developing in the operation due to degradation of control and safety systems or deviations from initial operation and maintenance procedures and may lead to severe incidents.

And finally, since new technologies and architectures for instrumentation, control and safety systems introduced new risks of cyber intrusions and attacks that need to be considered in the risk management and the world of security standards (ISA 62443-3-2 Security Risk Assessment and System Design) and safety standards (ISA-TR84.00.09-2013 Security countermeasures related to Safety Instrumented Systems and Associated IACS) advanced in the last few years, we will look at how Cyber Process Hazard Analysis (PHA) techniques are being applied to provide the same systematic approach to security as traditionally applied to safety.

 

“Good process safety management does not happen by chance and require constant active engagement”, in this paper we suggested novel approaches that can revive and improve the process safety.