(536a) Application of Simplified LOPA and Development of Risk Matrix for a University or Small Operational Company

A disquieting number of recent worldwide accidents in laboratories and small operating companies demonstrates that there is a need to improve their hazard identification and risk assessment practices. These entities seem to face common challenges including a lack of process safety knowledge and a lack of human resources that can be used to properly recognize hazards and evaluate the risks. Moreover, there is a lack of distinction between the concepts of hazard and risk among the people outside of the large process industry. It seems, they often do not understand that the hazard corresponds to the potential for harm and is usually independent of scale, e.g. a small quantity of hazardous chemical is the same hazard as a big quantity of the same. It seems that at the same time, they do not understand that risk is related to the combination of the likelihood of the accident scenario occurring and the severity of the potential consequence, which may lead to have a large risk even if the hazards look to be small. This risk has to be minimized by introducing more layers of protection in place and the better quality of the layers to lower the likelihood, and thus lower the risk.

This work presents the development of the method which can help the entities with low human resources, like laboratories and small operating companies, to evaluate the risk level and the need for layers of protection. A simplified Layer of Protection Analysis (LOPA) and Risk Matrix were developed and proposed to be implemented into Preliminary Hazard Analysis (PreHA) methodology as an easier tool than quantitative or semi-quantitative approach, and yet effective for laboratories or small companies with low human resources. In this method, the layers of protection are identified based on their quality and no reliability numbers are required. Examples are provided and discussion is given.