HazOps effort, chemical industry

Another evolving approach to facility system safety is the HazOps effort being developed by the chemical industry. This effort is being promoted by individual chemical and petrochemical companies and by the American Institute of Chemical Engineers. 

In summary, the broad HazOp effort of the chemical industry is a facility system safety effort. It is one of the first such efforts to originate in the private sector. A sharing of information between the HazOp advocates and those promoting facility system safety should be mutually beneficial. 

In 1985, the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) initiated a project to produce the Guidelines for Hazard Evaluation Procedures. This document, prepared by Battelle, includes many system safety analysis tools. Even though frequently identified as hazard and operability (HazOp) programs, the methods being developed by the petrochemical industry to use preliminary hazard analyses, fault trees, failure modes, effects, and criticality analyses, as well as similar techniques to identify, analyze, and control risks systematically, look very much like system safety efforts tailored for the petrochemical industry (Goldwaite 1985). 

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