Safety check

Assessing industrial
hazards with software
by Ellen Gardner
We wouldn’t want to board a plane that hadn’t undergone an
in-depth hazard and operability analysis. But the process is
both time-consuming and costly. An Ontario risk management
company has developed software that reduces the headaches.
A
s necessary as the process is, a hazard and operability analysis or
HAZOP has traditionally been
arduous and painstaking. Those who perform HAZOPs have gone so far as to
describe them as the “industrial equivalent of a trip to the dentist.” “There is
no denying these reviews make our world
a safer place, but they also place considerable demands on the time and energy
of engineers, facilitators and risk managers,” says Nigel Hyatt, P.Eng., director
of technical services for Dyadem International Limited in Markham, Ontario.
Dyadem is in the business of risk management, and its engineering services division has performed and documented
HAZOPs for clients for several years.
“We’ve used every possible tool you can
think of,” says Nick Colella, engineering
division manager. “Everything from manual transcripts to spreadsheets.”
“We wanted to find a way of doing
HAZOPs that was easier, faster and more
versatile than the standard methods,” says
Hyatt. They also hoped the project would
create a meaningful bridge between the
programmers developing the software
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E N G I N E E R I N G
and the teams executing HAZOPs.
The project began in the Hyatt family’s back bedroom in 1992, and took two
years to develop. With marketing and
regular updates of the software, Dyadem’s
software business has grown from five
employees to 25, now occupying an office
space of 450 square metres. PHA-Pro 5®
—the fifth generation of HAZOP software—is Dyadem’s made-in-Canada
answer to all that was ailing safety review
teams.
Safety reviews are a fact of life in just
about any environment where hazards
exist. They typically take the form of a
checklist. “HAZOPs look at the com-
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plete process,” says Colella, “and ask: Are
people following the correct procedures?
Are the proper codes and standards being
adhered to? Are steps in place to reduce or
safeguard against potential hazards?”
HAZOPs examine every node within a system to identify possible deviations (hazards).
“The HAZOP doesn’t replace the safety review, it just goes much deeper,” says
Colella. “You take the complete process,
break it down into nodes and each one of
those nodes is broken down even further
in terms of potential deviations.” The
review team for the HAZOP—engineering staff, production staff, maybe a chemist,
health and safety reps, risk managers—
work together to find the causes and the
consequences of the deviations, the risks
of those deviations taking place, and then
finally, what safeguards are in place to
ensure they don’t happen. Some potential
deviations might be: What happens if you
have back flow versus forward flow? What
happens if it goes up, if it’s supposed to go
down? What happens if you have too little ammonia and too much hydrogen?
Documenting all this information is not
an easy task at the best of times, but it has
been made a lot easier with computerization.
“When you’re looking for causes, you
can use your imagination, but at the end of
the day, people get tired and lose their concentration,” says Hyatt. Dyadem’s HAZOP
software has various knowledge-based
libraries, some with over 2000 causes and
safeguards for the main methodologies, to
help establish what can cause those deviations and what can be done about them.
“For experienced teams,” he says, “it’s like
a memory aide, since it prevents important
topics from being overlooked. And for less
experienced teams, the libraries provide a
learning exercise.”
In many cases, the company conducting the
HAZOP will use a number of people from
E N G I N E E R I N G
SOFTWARE BUYERS’ CHECKLIST
BEFORE YOU BUY HAZOP SOFTWARE, CONSIDER THESE QUESTIONS:
Will you want your software to run on single PCs or on a local area network?
How much disk space will the software occupy?
What technical support does the software vendor offer?
How often does the software vendor update the software?
Can the software vendor provide support at your company’s different sites?
Does the software vendor offer multiple licensing options?
What process hazards analysis methodologies does my company wish to use, and will
the software support them?
Is the software compatible with other relevant software on the operating system?
Does the software have features that will make my company’s HAZOPs (or other process
hazards analyses) more efficient?
To identify what’s available on the market, type the words “HAZOP” or “HAZOP software” into search engines on the Internet. Before purchasing software, try to obtain a
working demo or a copy made available on loan and put it through its paces. You should
also ensure that the software is written as a 32-bit application for the latest generation
of computing systems.
different facilities–a move that keeps the
HAZOP more interactive and prevents
workers from having tunnel vision. “For that
reason, you need software that is going to
be more versatile, and preferably has hyperlink capabilities,” says Colella. “Hyperlink is
the most effective means of data management, whether it’s MSDS, CAD drawings or
action items updates.”
Computerization has other benefits,
notably:
◆ consistency of analysis;
◆ access to stored data and information,
on an as-needed basis;
◆ documentation of results. This ensures
that accurate and representative records
are created.
“This last point is extremely important,”
says Hyatt. “There is perhaps nothing more
frustrating than conducting a meaningful
PHA (process hazards analysis) session, only
to find that the documentation fails to adequately record or encapsulate what has transpired, or that it cannot be understood.”
To promote ease of application, the software is Windows®-based. It provides several options for performing the analysis and,
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like Windows, caters to a variety of individual preferences. Users can enter data by using
either keyboard combinations, the mouse, a
tool bar or pull-down/pop-up menus.
The HAZOP software also features what’s
known as the “naming convention.” In a
standard HAZOP, you create columns with
such headings as “causes,” “consequences,”
“recommendations” and “safeguards.” Users
in different jurisdictions may prefer to use
different terminology, substituting the word
“controls” for “safeguards,” for example. The
naming convention permits the renaming
of these key items, and is thus adaptable to
many other applications.
HAZOP methodology is comprehensive
and intended to list concrete recommen33
dations, with the goal of mitigating identified hazards and reducing operating risks.
“It’s possible to get caught up with listing
causes or hazards, which may never lead to
credible consequences,” says Colella. For
that reason, the team at Dyadem strongly recommends the use of a facilitator, or
HAZOP team leader, to help keep discussions in perspective. “The facilitator
can be someone within the company or a
third party from another facility, but they
should have a general understanding of the
industry, and be able to ask the right types
of questions,” he points out. “It’s the facilitator’s job to take each and every suggested cause and ask: ‘Does that really apply to
your operation?’ This person ensures there
is credibility to the causes and consequences
being suggested.”
Based on its past experience, Dyadem
applied a simple semi-quantitative methodology to compare the various methods of
transcribing HAZOPs or safety reviews,
both computer-based and manual. Table
1 ranks various features of three methods
from 10 to 1, with 10 being the best and
1 the worst.
“Because risk is defined as the product of
consequence (severity of an incident) times
the frequency (likelihood), once the user
has identified the hazard, they can estimate
how severe it would be,” says Hyatt. For
example, a risk could be very severe but
highly unlikely, or of minor severity and
very likely. Both scenarios would be assigned
a low risk matrix. A much higher value
would be placed on a hazard that was moderately severe and very frequent. Most
process hazard analyses are, by nature, qualitative. “We built a risk matrix into the
HAZOP software to add some partial quantification, but it can still be customized to
your own standards,” notes Hyatt.
Since it came to market six years ago, the
HAZOP software has undergone numerous updates and revisions. The people who
rely on PHA methodology now include
manufacturers of medical devices, the aerospace industry, water treatment plants and
automotive manufacturers, who have all
provided suggested improvements to the
software. Dyadem has also relied on constructive criticism from within its own ranks.
The teams doing the HAZOP analysis
say the process has become easier in all
respects, and they report improved documentation and downstream-tracking. “The
program saves time, which results in considerable cost-savings,” adds Hyatt.
There are three major misconceptions
about HAZOP software:
M I S C O N C E P T I O N 1 : “The lowestpriced software is also the best value.”
Since the cost of HAZOP software is usually minuscule compared to the cost of performing the HAZOP, you will, invariably,
get the best financial return by using the best
product on the market.
M I S C O N C E P T I O N 2 : “There isn’t
much difference between one piece of
HAZOP software and another.”
Some types of software are less versatile than
others and may be less user-friendly. A program needs to be comprehensive in its capabilities, while also being simple to operate.
One that directs the user into an inescapable
maze or pays little attention to navigation is
unlikely to be a winner with HAZOP or safety review teams.
M I S C O N C E P T I O N 3 : “Those who
perform HAZOPs are best suited to writing
HAZOP software.”
Not so. Organizations mainly oriented
toward executing HAZOPs may be less successful at producing good software. “We’ve
seen many programs created by people who
want to solve their problems through programming and are ill-suited to the task,” says
Nigel Hyatt. “In the ideal scenario, the programmers ask what the users (typically engineers) want, and then the two parties working together. To make the process of
performing HAZOPs less arduous, we need
all the help that programmers, engineers,
facilitators and other team members can pro◆
vide,” he concludes.
Ellen Gardner is a Toronto freelance writer.
TABLE 1. SCORECARD FOR HAZOP METHODS SCORES
FEATURE
Learning Curve Required
User Friendliness
Productivity
Customization Features
Copying Capabilities
Team Participation
Quality Assurance
Assists Auditing of HAZOP
Good Documentation
"Power" Features
Overall Assessment
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MANUAL TRANSCRIPTION
SCORES (OUT OF 10)
SPREADSHEETS
None (10)
Maximum (10)
Poor (1)
Very Good (10)
None (1)
No (1)
None (1)
No (1)
No (1)
None (1)
Poor (37)
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Little (7)
Good (7)
Fair (4)
Good (7)
Some (4)
Some (4)
Little (4)
Little (4)
Fair (4)
Some (4)
Fair (49)
WINDOWS®-BASED
SOFTWARE
Some (4)
Fair (4)
Very Good (10)
Very Good (10)
Very Good (10)
Very Good (10)
Very Good (10)
Very Good (10)
Very Good (10)
Very Good (10)
Very Good (88)
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