The Management and Tracking of Recommendations Arising From a Hazard and Operability (HAZOP) Study Performed on the Engineering Design of a Large Integrated Offshore Production and Drilling Platform

Abstract

Abstract The project is to be the first fixed offshore drilling and production platform on the east coast of Canada. Part of the agreement with the regulatory authorities for the development license was that a Hazard and Operability (HAZOP) study must be performed on the overall platform engineering design. Due to the number of design groups at several locations involved in various aspects of the platform design and to the difference in extent of design development at these locations, it was recognized that a method had to be developed to effectively manage and track the recommendations that would result from the HAZOP studies. The management and tracking of the recommendations evolved around a commercially available HAZOP software package, the development of an interface program, and a database for tracking the recommendations. With the three software packages the project team was capable of handling and responding to the study teams’ recommendations (approximately 900) from the two HAZOP studies over a 16 month period (primary and detailed, corresponding to the level of design development). This paper outlines the process taken by the project teams from the development of the HAZOP procedures, to the closing out of the recommendations from the HAZOP sessions. It includes a description of the development of the interface software and the commercially available relational database used for the tracking system and a discussion of the lessons learned from the tracking of the recommendations.