Improving process safety for the operation of Major Hazard Facilities

Abstract

The discipline of process safety management has proven to be a valuable tool for assisting operators of Major Hazard Facilities (MHF) in focussing on the critically important ‘few’, with a heightened level of scrutiny than that of the ‘many’ lesser critical yet still important elements of a process system. This discipline attracts much oversight, discussion, and enthusiasm from many areas within and outside asset operations teams. Major Accident Hazards may vary in severity and probability throughout the life cycle of existing assets, it is, therefore, important to review these periodically. Clear purpose and definition of Safety Critical Elements (SCE), and in some cases Integrity Critical Elements (ICE), along with intelligent rationalisation of these to reflect the items of legitimate criticality, will allow higher precision and clarity, leading to higher confidence and an improved ability to manage genuine process safety risk. Further improvements can be made through real-time and near-time reporting through risk visualisation bowtie diagrams to ensure hazards can be managed to As Low as Reasonably Practicable (ALARP) and their status made visible to enable the most effective prioritisation of work which prioritises restoration of the most compromised threat and consequence barriers first.