7th Latin American Conference on Process Safety

Basics on Structured What If Hazards Evoluation Technique

Author

Herce, M., DuPont

Historically, one of the most significant failure in Process Hazards Analysis, identified through the investigation of incidents in which a breakdown of the PHA element was found to be a key factor, is the failure to identify the specific sequence of events that led to the accident. In fact either failed to ask the right What If question or failed to completely develop the hazardous event scenario. For any methodology, the key success criterion is asking and correctly answering all of the key â??What Ifâ? questions. The traditional What If methodology has been developed to another stage called Structured What If in which is tried to overcome the main difficulty on developing the right question about an specific process hazard.

In this paper it is intended to present the fundaments of the structured what if technique some examples of use of the technique are also presented.