HAZOP How to make them less boring?

[Guidoo]

HAZOP study was "invented" some 30 years ago to see whether modifications to an existing plant could affect safety of the plant. Typical example would be that as a result of addition of a blockvalve in line between two vessels, first vessel would not be protected by safety valve on second vessel.

In these cases, HAZOP study would take only a couple of hours or days.

Because of the succes of the method (and because of some major accidents), method was later also applied to complete new plants. Consequence was that HAZOP could now take up to several months.

In my opinion, quality of the HAZOP study largely depends on the motivation of the participants.

My questions are:

Do you have suggestions on how to keep team members fresh and motivated during a HAZOP that takes several weeks or months?

Could it be considered to HAZOP only parts of the plant, e.g. only HAZOP areas that are significantly different from other similar plants or only HAZOP high risk areas of the plant?

 

[owg]

Don't go more than two weeks without a week off.
Don't HAZOP things like utility distribution drawings
Avoid duplication by managing the process properly, its OK to write "covered above under node 3, deviation 2, cause 3 (3.2.3)
Use the best software. We use PHA-Pro.
Many participants in HAZOPs which I facilitate tell me they enjoyed the process and learned a lot.

HAZOP at

http://www.curryhydrocarbons.ca

 

[akd9305]

I think HAZOP should be carried out for all the facilities (e.g. offsite, utilities and process plants). even if the plants are identical, different reco shall be generated by doing HAZOP with different experts. In my opinion HAZOP study should not be continuied for more than three to four hours per day. Also the type of recommendation should be decided based on the experience and criticality of the consequence.

 

[MortenA]

-Use a good team leader
-Reduce team size to the minimum (no "politically elected" Team members)
-dont solve problems, dont turn it into a design review
-Limit hr. pr. day to a resonable no (8 incl pauses)
-Select an outside location (e.g. a hotel) with supply of a good lunch, fruit etc.

Best regards

Morten

 

[hacksaw]

Take two asprin and drink plenty of water...

 

[Guidoo]

Thanks so far. I especially liked the comment
"Reduce team size to the minimum (no "politically elected" Team members)"

On one of my first HAZOPs there were a couple of those. Even members that don't open their mouth at all make the meetings more formal (==> less open discussions) than when the team would have been smaller. Even worse are those that seem to be part of the team just to prevent getting any recommendations that may jeopardize the project schedule...

But of course, it takes some courage to say to a client representative that he/she should not join the HAZOP team...

In my opinion, HAZOP team (incl. chairman and scribe) should not be larger than 7 or 8 people.

 

[MarkkraM]

I've found a good HAZOP leader is the most important thing.
They must be able to know when to move things along and know when it is important to focus an issues.
Always cater for it as well!