Management of Process Safety Risk Assessments – a gap in compliance?

Most operating companies within the high hazard industries are familiar with process safety risk assessment techniques such as Hazard and Operability (HAZOP) and Hazard Identification (HAZID) studies. Recent intelligence, however, indicates that a focus of the COMAH competent authorities is not just on the quality of such studies but how a linkage is made with an operator’s major accident hazard scenarios and the overall safety management system.

During interactions with the competent authority, many sites can present a suitable HAZOP or HAZID study, however there are many examples of other COMAH requirements being difficult to demonstrate. Examples include:

• Have you identified all potential major accident hazard scenarios?
• Do the site’s major accident hazard scenarios all link back to underlying hazard identification studies?
• Is the site’s application of process safety risk assessment proportionate?
• Do you have an overarching procedure for managing process safety risk assessments?
• Which process safety risk assessment tool should be used for a given circumstance?
• How do we know that our process safety risk assessments are effective?
• Have we taken all measures necessary to prevent, control or mitigate major accident hazards?

Our process safety specialists use these tools every day, helping clients in decision making to ensure the right tool is used and that the measures are in place for prevention, control, and mitigation of major accident hazard scenarios. If you want to find out more, please get in touch.