Your Reliability Engineering Professional Development Site
A listing in reverse chronological order of articles by:
Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A) are a part of today’s corporate growth strategy. As a part of M&A due diligence various critical business issues are evaluated. But what about safety performance of the company you are looking to acquire or merge with?
You will say that most M&A in oil and gas/chemical processing industries are asset-driven. You look at what the pots and pans can do for you in the future and base your M&A decision.
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This article is the third of fourteen parts to our risk management series. The series will be taking a look at the risk management guidelines under the ISO 31000 Standard to help you better understand them and how they relate to your own risk management activities. In doing so we’ll be walking through the core aspects of the Standard and giving you practical guidance on how to implement it.
In our previous articles (1st, 2nd) we introduced you to the core elements of the risk management framework. This included integration, design, implementation, evaluation, improvement, and the role of leadership and commitment.
In this article, we’ll be looking at integrating and adapting the risk management framework to your organisation. In particular, we’ll be focusing on how you can best understand your organization’s structures and context, appreciate the role of governance and strategy, appreciate risk management accountability, and the importance of being iterative and dynamic with your approach to integration.
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Natural gas pipelines have caused incidents leading to fatalities, injuries, and property damages.
To be precise, there have been an average of 50 serious gas pipeline incidents every year in the U.S. between 1990-2009 (Source: http://primis.phmsa.dot.gov/comm/reports/safety/SerPSI.html?nocache=4823) resulting in more than 300 fatalities. Majority of the reported gas incidents have occurred on the gas distribution lines – i.e. gas pipeline systems that are found in thousands of communities from coast to coast and distribute natural gas to our homes and businesses.
This article is the second of fourteen parts to our risk management series. The series will be taking a look at the risk management guidelines under the ISO 31000 Standard to help you better understand them and how they relate to your own risk management activities. In doing so we’ll be walking through the core aspects of the Standard and giving you practical guidance on how to implement it.
In this particular article, we’ll be highlighting the role and importance of leadership and commitment to supporting robust risk management practices. We’ll also be looking at the benefits of such support together with some practical tips for doing so.
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Risk is a perception.
Our perception of risks is mainly affected by two factors:
(a) whether we are voluntarily accepting the risk.
A good example is a refinery worker considers the risks at workplace lower than his cousin who has only read about chemical plants; and
(b) potential consequences of event or act or decision.
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Reliability is designed into a product. Poor reliability is long term, difficult and expensive to rectify because it is woven into the fabric of the product. That is why high reliability products require complete and accurate analyses, simulations, and models to be successful. High reliable components are essential as well. Single point failures are taboo but, in some cases, there is no way to avoid them.
This paper presents two examples of how to design single point failures for high reliability.
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LNG spilled onto water sometime undergoes a rapid phase transition (RPT) or physical explosion creating localized overpressures.
Such physical explosions are also observed when water contacts molten metal or hot lava (steam explosions)
[Read more…]This article is the first in our risk management series. The series will be taking a look at the risk management guidelines under the ISO 31000 Standard to help you better understand them and how they relate to your own risk management activities. In doing so we’ll be walking through the core aspects of the Standard and giving you practical guidance on how to implement it.
In this particular article, we’ll be introducing you to the ISO 31000 Standards, the guiding principles, and outlining the risk management framework.
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When you are driving on a highway, usually there is a speed limit. If you exceed this limit, a cop can give you a ticket.
In Houston, most highways have a speed limit of 65-70 miles per hour…although most drivers appear to assume it implies “90-mph is okay”.
Let us say the city of Houston were to remove the speed restrictions.
Instead they put forward the mandate “drive safely”.
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So long as there are products and services offered by an organization, there will be the existence of a sales force.
The basic fundamentals of selling are simple: a customer expresses a desire for something and, in turn, someone sells them a product or service to address that desire. Essentially, sales are how an organization converts a “want” into a “need.” While these fundamentals are timeless, they are rooted in a reactive process.
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Generally speaking, 5-6 things have to go wrong for an incident to occur. Furthermore, these events or failures have to occur in a certain sequence.
The characteristics of mega disasters is that 5-6 events with fairly low probabilities of occurrence line up.
[Read more…]Some common reasons why requirements can cause risk to a project are:
This paper explains how poorly defined requirements can impact the project.
About a year ago, the Minerals Management Services (MMS) proposed a new rule that would require operators of oil and gas operations in the US Outer Continental Shelf to develop and implement Safety and Environmental Management System (SEMS).
It is expected that the rule will be promulgated sometime this year (2010).
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On September 15, 2021, ASQ announced the formation of the Center for Electoral Quality and Integrity. This announcement caused a conflicted reaction. On the one hand I liked that the Government Division, which was pushing this action, was showing some level of activity, after almost none for several years. One the other hand, I just laughed at the idea that ASQ and Government Division was going to, or even be capable of, having an impact on electoral quality or integrity. This is not a case of believing the objective is bad.
It is a case of realizing that this is not the 1990s when quality was a key priority of governments around the world. And that ASQ does not have the same level of influence it had, when in the 1990s it was instrumental in getting Education added to the Baldrige Award.
This piece discusses the white paper on Electoral Quality and Integrity which the Center seeks to implement. It also discusses the forces likely to prevent ASQ from being successful.
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I noticed that API-14C recommends monitoring of 2-ppm (and higher) SO2 levels. I felt this was a really low threshold value for SO2 .
What surprised me further is that the Immediately Dangerous to Life or Health (IDLH) value for SO2 is 100-ppm…same as H2S!
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