Your Reliability Engineering Professional Development Site
A listing in reverse chronological order of articles by:
While performing consequence modeling we are often required to evaluate damage to population and property from a fire.
Thermal radiation impact to humans from a fire should be based on the dosage – i.e. the intensity of exposure and the duration of exposure. Furthermore, such an impact from thermal radiation on population should consider the protection offered by clothing/buildings and the ability of a person to find a shelter from radiation.
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“Puttin’ wood in t’ole after ‘oss ‘as bolted“… this is actually English, it really is, and it’s a Yorkshire phrase meaning ‘shutting the gate after the horse has gone’.
How often are we wise after the fact? How often is more time and effort spent focusing on the gate rather than retrieving the horse? There is a tendency to try and find the person responsible for not closing the gate, requiring more people to check on gate closing, writing procedures for closing the gate and this is coupled with hours of pointless and misdirected discussions by every man along with their barking dogs. But what about catching the horse that now runs free and ensuring it can’t bolt again?
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It is estimated that there are more than 500,000 Above ground storage tanks (ASTs) in the U.S. These tanks can leak gradually (more likely) or may collapse suddenly (low probability). The loss of tank content can lead to water contamination or may lead to a fire in case of a hydrocarbon.
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Most of the risk assessment models I’ve discussed before use a basic formula to calculate a value for risk. By adding or multiplying values for the individual factors, you’ll get a numeric value for the risk itself. That’s going to allow you to put things into order, apply a color-code or description. That gives you enough differentiation to start a risk-based discussion or determine where you need to focus your attention and resources.
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Citizens often oppose chemical process facilities near their community because of potential for high consequence events. This risk aversion of society is commonly referred to as NIMBY (Not-in-my-backyard). The risk aversion is based not by taking into account annual fatalities but based on potential worst-case catastrophe. Thus the main factor influencing risk perception is catastrophic consequence potential.
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My contention is management many times compromises quality to mitigate budget and cost issues resulting in a major risk to the project.
How to minimize the quality risk on a project is addressed in this paper. The approach to do this is based on my 30 years of project and project risk management experience and knowledge. Let’s start with a story to illustrate my contention.
[Read more…]Guest Post by Andrew Sheves (first posted on CERM ® RISK INSIGHTS – reposted here with permission)
Many people have a few smoke alarms dotted around their house and, to me, these are some of the most straightforward set-it-and-forget-it risk management tools you can get. You set these up and then…nothing. You can forget about them until that annoying ‘chirp’ sound wakes you up one night, telling you to change the battery.
And most people will never hear their smoke alarm go off except for those times that their cooking gets a little out of hand.
However, if there were a fire, they’d know about it immediately and be able to react.
[Read more…]Studies show most projects fail due to poor management of known risks. The known risks on a project are:
Generally speaking, cost problems are due to insufficient budget, poor budget control, and poor planning. How to minimize the cost (budget) risk on a project is addressed in this paper. The approach to do this is based on my 30 years of project and project risk management experience and knowledge.
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In the previous article (Enabling Agile Enterprise Risk Management Part II: Disciplines) I identified the disciplines necessary to enable you to transform your enterprise at speed. At the conclusion of that article, I promised to present a design for a repository and system to support AERM. This article will fulfill that promise.
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This is not an article about an endangered species plundered to near extinction as trophies for big game hunters or being poached for its aphrodisiacal ivory or describing a mythical elephant’s graveyard…it’s about those metaphorical elephants that frequent rooms in political corridors of power, boardroom suites and project offices around the World. Although these elephants are known to exist they are either not immediately recognised or conveniently avoided.
[Read more…]I’m sure you’ve heard people referring to COVID-19 as a ‘Black Swan’ – something that no-one could have seen coming – but is that actually the case?
Terrible though it is, I don’t think it’s accurate to describe the current situation as a Black Swan because we’ve had to deal with highly contagious, deadly diseases before.
Calling this a ‘Black Swan’ is, therefore, a way to excuse a confused response: ‘how could we have prepared for something that no-one could see coming?’
However, genuine Black Swan events do exist and we need to understand these because the consequences can be significant. It’s also useful to know what we can and cannot do to prepare for Black Swans due to the uncertainty that these involve.
[Read more…]Micromanagement is rarely praised but is sometimes very necessary. When new operations commence and procedures are being developed, or there is a high degree of complexity, it is essential to get things right and ‘micromanagement’ comes into its own. Training new people can require micromanagement until they get up to speed, understand an organisation’s processes and procedures, and develop any necessary experience. Also, if there is a need for greater control over an operation requiring accurate performance metrics then micromanagement will be the order of the day.
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Failure Simulation has confirmed all root causes in the Storm Packer failure analysis. The focus is now on mitigations that prevent them from occurring again.
Mitigations are controls that prevent failures or reduce their probability of occurring. Ideally, an OEM implements mitigations to the product through Design for Reliability (DfR) activities before commercialization. Some mitigations may be best practices in product design. Others may be best practices for installation or maintenance processes. Some have been acquired through FRACAS programs. However, all will be based on institutional knowledge.
[Read more…]In David McKee’s book for children ‘Not Now Bernard’, a young boy tries to warn his parents about a monster in the yard, but they’re too busy to pay attention. All they say is ‘not now Bernard’ and ignore him. In the end, the monster eats Bernard and moves into the house, but his parents are still too busy to notice.
[Read more…]Punch lines, ad-libs, and instrumental solos, even a single note on a Tibetan singing bowl, all depend on one thing…timing. Project Communication is also about timing and, whilst many people speak and opine with impunity the timing of written communication and converting possibly wild words into black & white can often mean the difference between collaboration and cooperation or resistance and antagonism.
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