Abstract

We spend around 2000 hours a year, some even cresting 3000 a year at our places of work. For most of us, we refer to work as a home, away from home. One of the most common methods of identifying and mitigating process risks, at our home, is the Hazard and Operability (HAZOP) study. These studies typically take place off site to minimize facility distractions and to accommodate sterile environments. Most of you reading this will equate the inner wall of hotel conference rooms and engineering offices with HAZOP. Weeks pass by offsite ending with a sigh of relief before returning home. After returning home, information stemming from the HAZOP is rarely brought up again and almost never validated to be true. We have a general idea that our safeguards work most of the time however, do we have any evidence that our protection layers taken credit for in HAZOPs are actually functioning in the field? Do we know if we are fully protected in our own home, as the team decided on a Monday morning or Friday afternoon? Are we achieving the risk reduction claimed in session at site? When maintenance needs to be performed, do we know our risk exposure? Not all safeguards are created equally, do we know which safeguards have the largest impact to facility risk? In this presentation we will take a look at what we can all do as next steps to taking HAZOP home and determine if we are operating safely.