PHA: A must or a MUST?

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Our thoughts and prayers are with those whose lives were lost, and those injured, as well as their families in last week’s fertilizer plant explosion in West Texas. A few statements made in the press were a bit surprising and I wanted to share those with you. Before I begin, let me be clear that I do not have detailed knowledge of the functional safety culture at the West fertilizer plant nor was anyone from exida involved in any functional safety services for this plant.

• The plant’s June 2011 risk management plan (RMP), filed with the Environmental Protection Agency, identified several potential hazards, … The report asserted that the worst-case scenario for the plant “would be the release of…

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Replace Before Failure

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The solenoid valve manufacturer provides an FMEDA report that lists “useful life = 12 years.”  Useful life is a reliability engineering term that indicates a point in time when the failure rate of a device will begin increasing rather rapidly.  Why do we care about this time interval?  That means that any safety function equipment operated past that point in time will not achieve the designed risk reduction factor. The IEC 61511 standard states that our maintenance procedures must require that all equipment be replaced before the end of its useful life rating.  OK, there is a good reason for this.

Then we ask the maintenance supervisor to sign the purchase requisition for the new device.  First response is a…

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The Safety Lifecycle as a Risk Control Loop

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I have been doing a number of recent projects introducing the safety lifecycle to companies that are new to the field. As a result I have been playing with various ways to think about the overall safety lifecycle philosophy. As many of the more experienced readers are aware, the overall safety lifecycle ideas are not new. But, it is worth looking at these ideas in a variety of ways to ensure we are implementing them as effectively and clearly as possible.

Today’s blog supports this goal. It presents the safety lifecycle as a basic feedback and control loop to achieve a set point value for risk as shown in the figure.

In this risk management…

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Babies, Bathwater, and Australian Safety Laws

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The old saying goes, “Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.” But it looks like a number of people in Australia may be in danger of doing just that with their response to the country’s newly harmonized health and safety laws.

Australia’s new Work Health and Safety Act says company officers “… must exercise due diligence to ensure that the person conducting the business or undertaking complies with that duty or obligation.” An organization also must ensure “workers and other persons should be given the highest level of protection against harm to their health, safety and welfare from hazards and risks arising from work … as is reasonably practical.”

So far, the…

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Keep Risk Personal

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We are fortunate that Risk Analysts have developed a logical framework of quantitative and semi-quantitative analysis techniques that allow us to assess and optimally mediate risk. And we all know that this is part of the Safety Lifecycle, a series of engineering steps/procedures that represent best safety practices. These are documented in IEC 61511 for the process industries. We also know that our methods are fallible and accidents may occur.  In many ways this is what the measure of “tolerable risk” is all about.  But I think it wise to consider the personal side of risk whenever making a decision about safety.

In the typical high consequence / low frequency accident scenario, it is well known that a person…

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Lifecycle Analysis: It’s Worth the Effort

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Performing a risk analysis as part of an IEC61508/61511/ISA 84.01 safety lifecycle process can be quite challenging. How can you be sure you get what you need within budget and how can your team provide the best value for money? When these services are brought in from outside, it can be difficult to see high quality and the value of that quality in advance. But it is almost always easy to see the cost. Also the buying decision is often based on the project requirements rather than the overall life of the plant requirements. As a result, this situation can easily lead to a lower quality risk analysis. This problem is what classical economics calls “the market for lemons,” and…

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What’s the Risk?

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As safety professionals, it is our duty to attempt to educate and explain to the public.  Perhaps the biggest challenge is to explain the concept of risk.  Many times after an accident we have heard a politician say something like “We will do whatever it takes to make sure this never happens again.”  There seems to be no analysis of risk versus cost. Sometimes resources are expended far beyond the risk, and sometimes little is done to prevent future accidents. 

The politicians and the public clearly view risk differently than safety professionals. For example, last year my company car was a Toyota Prius. I read reports and even had an email discussion with someone who had a “sudden unintended…

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