What If Analysis Workflow

This workflow describes the process for conducting a What-If analysis by:

• Defining the what ifs, causes, consequences, and safeguards in the analysis.
• Assessing the unmitigated and mitigated risks

Persona: Analyst

Create a Hazards Analysis (of type What-If) to record the details of the What-If analysis. This is to analyze the potential causes of a hazard.

Persona: Analyst

Form a multi-disciplinary team that will perform the Hazards Analysis. Assign the Facilitator role to one of the team members, and the Owner role to another.

Persona: Analyst

Identify the system or node for which you want to perform the HAZOP analysis. Create a System/Node and define it. You can link a System/Node to assets ( i.e., Equipment and Functional Locations). APM creates an Asset Group for all the assets that are linked to a System/Node and to the Causes and Safeguards in the System/Node.

Persona: Analyst

Create a What-If record to store the details of a process that can potentially deviate from normal conditions, which could result in a hazard.

Persona: Analyst

Create a Cause record to store the details of each cause that resulted in or may result in a hazardous condition. You can link a Cause to assets ( i.e., Equipment and Functional Locations). APM creates an Asset Group for all the assets that are linked to a System/Node and to the Causes and Safeguards in the System/Node.

Persona: Analyst

Create a Consequence record to store the details of the impact of the hazard.

Persona: Analyst

Before a safeguard is defined, assess the severity and frequency of the consequence for each aspect defined in a risk matrix. By default, these aspects are Safety, Health, Environment, and Financial. Depending on the Risk Matrix associated with the site, these aspects may vary. You can refer to the failure rate data of the piece of equipment or trip reports to assess the unmitigated risk.

Persona: Analyst

Create a Strategic Recommendation to provide suggestions about how to mitigate the risk. You can also promote the Recommendation to Asset Strategy Management (ASM).

Persona: Analyst

Asset Strategy Management defines the health monitoring requirements for an asset, or asset class, based on understanding the underlying failure modes and effects, in combination with the criticality of the asset. This process identifies candidate failure modes where health monitoring offers a significant reduction in risk. This workflow assumes that the Strategy has been approved, an Action has been created for each Risk where a health indicator is the identified mitigation, and the Actions are not yet implemented.

Go to the Asset Strategy Management workflow.

Persona: Analyst

Create a Safeguard record to store the details of the safeguard that will mitigate the risk, and specify if the safeguard is an Independent Protection Layer. If the Safeguard is a safety instrumented function (SIS), you must link the Instrumented Function to the Safeguard. The protective instrument loops installed on the instrumented function can mitigate the risk. The SIS Management module allows you to assess the SIL value for the instrumented function. You can link a Safeguard to assets (i.e., Equipment and Functional Locations). APM creates an Asset Group for all the assets that are linked to a System/Node and to the Causes and Safeguards in the System/Node.

Persona: Analyst

You can create a LOPA to access the Safety Integrity Level (SIL) for a scenario. When you create a LOPA from a Consequence in a Hazards Analysis, the LOPA is automatically linked with the Consequence. You can also link an existing LOPA to a Consequence in the Hazards Analysis. The Safeguards defined in the Hazards Analysis will appear in the LOPA. Similarly, the Safeguards defined in the LOPA will appear in the Hazards Analysis. Changes made to the Safeguards will be reflected in both the LOPA and the Hazards Analysis.

Persona: Analyst

After a safeguard is put into use, assess the severity and frequency of the consequence for each aspect defined in a risk matrix. By default, these aspects are Safety, Health, Environment, and Financial. Depending on the Risk Matrix associated with the site, these aspects may vary.

Persona: Analyst

Go to the LOPA workflow.