(64a) Optimization of QRA Tools & Power BI Interrogation to Support Agile Risk-Informed Decision Making

Quantitative Risk Assessments (QRAs) have helped assure the oil & gas industry and stakeholders (neighbors and regulators) that our facilities can be operated safely and have identified areas where the risk of major accident events can be better managed. QRA tools available in the industry necessitate a premium of cost & time in the quest for required quality. This creates a challenge for projects & operating assets in making risk informed decisions in a timely manner.

QRAs are typically executed by third-party contractors, taking months to complete at a significant cost. The reliance on third parties has contributed to a lack of understanding of the results of these analyses by the end users. This also inhibits the ability to use QRA to make informed decisions related to management of change or evaluate risk reduction alternatives once an asset is operating, given the third-party interface and long lead time required to make changes.

Chevron in partnership with a commercial software vendor, optimized both onshore and offshore QRA applications, reducing cycle time & cost by over 70%. These applications support agile project development, provide the data needed to make day to day operations decisions, analyze various potential risk reduction strategies in real time, and reduce reliance on third parties.

Chevron also developed in-house Power BI tools to interrogate QRA results such that the top risk contributors can instantly be traced back all the way down to a single release event. The published QRA results in Power BI can be accessed and interrogated by any user with no background or skillset to operate a QRA tool. This enables the customers to easily understand the QRA results and its top risk contributors.

Demonstration at this conference will include the fidelity of these tools, cost savings and interrogation of big data using Power BI to arrive at meaningful recommendations that have greater impacts to risk reduction. This presentation will also illustrate how these tools have been transformative in supporting agile project development and helping our operations better understand and manage process safety.