Quantitative Risk Ranking

The classification of potential risk indentified during the PHA’s (Process Hazard Analysis) were done in a qualitative way, without considering the failure rates of the initiator event causes  or the safeguards, and it used to consider only the quantity of failures in order to the event occur. (eg: Just one failure or two system failure or human failure, etc…).

After studying some specific Literature and Benchmarking with two big Companies, the Quantitative Risk Ranking was developed considering the failure rates of the initiator event causes, Human factor and the safeguards.

As a complement to this project, the classification scenarios was changed from Potential Risk to Potential Risk and Residual risk, allowing  a quickly and efficiently evaluation of the scenarios classified as Accepted. This change has also allowed a better visualization, focus and attention on the scenarios classified as ALARP (As Low as Reasonable Practicable) and not accepted.

As an immediate result of this project, we had a mindset change on the process risk classification, a better visualization and focus on the most important scenarios, a reduction of the risk degree only by effective safeguards, and an increase in the process safety culture inside production area, once  this project was developed together with them.