We have not seen a drop in quality of the HAZOP (risk reviews) in projects lately. BUT, we saw a dramatic drop about 25 years ago; this occurred when lots of new folks (EPC companies especially) starting saying “Sure, we can provide that HAZOP for you.” There was (and still is) little control of competency of the HAZOP leaders – and yes, many companies just want to tick the box and not really do a good risk review. Fortunately, in the past 10 years, we have witnessed many LARGE companies waking up to this issue and insisting on high competency on teams (including the leaders/scribes) and full scope reviews during major projects and during MOCs and for existing plants. Thousands of poor risk reviews (HAZOPs) have been redone in the past 10+ years. This trend is encouraging given the very poor project HAZOPs of 20 years ago.

Especially encouraging is how some major companies in the Middle East, China, USA, South America, and North America are following best practices for such risk reviews. Download these FREE papers if you want to see what we mean by “best practices” during risk reviews (much more than one HAZOP at design free) and what we mean by a complete PHA (process hazard analysis) by the end of a project.

http://piii.com/_downloads/Controlling_Risk_During_Major_Capital_Projects.pdf

http://piii.com/_downloads/Efficient_PHA_of_Non-Continuous_Operating_Modes.pdf

http://piii.com/_downloads/Process_Safety_Competency-website-R2.pdf

With that said, it is still true that MANY companies continue to not understand the business value of doing a proper series of risk reviews during projects (or redoing poor PHAs for existing facilities).

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