PL Risk Management—The Essential Elements of Risk Assessment

As the desire for more robust pipeline risk management grows, so too does the need for superior risk assessment.  A formal risk assessment provides the structure to increase understanding, reduce subjectivity, and ensure that important considerations are not overlooked.  Associated decision-making is therefore more consistent and reliable when formal techniques are used. But has pipeline […]

The economics of acceptable risk

While avoiding the many nuances of ‘acceptable’ vs ‘tolerable’ risk and ‘How safe is safe enough?’ issues, let’s scratch the surface of setting, moving towards, or sustaining a target risk level. We begin with a premise that risk reduction is sought for some asset or collection of assets. We explore the risk reduction opportunities with […]

Due Diligence—Risk Costs of Asset Ownership

In this column, we occasionally highlight applications of risk assessment that are perhaps less apparent to some.  Since risk permeates almost all industrial endeavors, it is not surprising that risk understanding is or should be an essential part of many types of decision-making.  We have already covered risk assessment in incident investigation and as a […]

I want to keep using our relative points scoring system. I don’t see why we should change.

Perhaps first question is this: ‘is your scoring system really giving you new knowledge and useful insights into actual risks?’ If not, then that alone should be a compelling reason to change—especially when modern risk assessment is both more efficient and less expensive. See more extensive discussion here.

Why do I need a PoF for time-dependent failure mechanisms? The TTF is more relevant since it drives integrity re-assessment schedules and other risk mgmt. efforts.

TTF is indeed the more useful metric for many applications. However, the TTF has a probabilistic aspect that must be understood before its use in, for example, setting an integrity reassessment interval. The TTF calculation uses segment lengths since degradation mechanisms are usually related to surface areas.  A probabilistic TTF per mile is an intermediate calculation […]

How do I include ‘tank overfilling’ in a risk assessment?

You first choose to include such events in your definition of ‘failure’. Then, the event is assessed like any integrity-threatening event, in terms of exposure, mitigation, and resistance. Perhaps this event can be included as an Incorrect Operations scenario, along with analogous events such as overpressure.

How should I be doing risk assessments in facilities like tank farms, compressor stations, etc?

Exactly the same way as for components on the ROW. You don’t want or need multiple risk assessment approaches. A good risk assessment methodology works equally efficiently on any component or any collection of components.  The challenge with facilities will be in segmentation. The more robust assessments will examine very small sub-components (eg, the casing of the pump […]

How do I include flange and screw-connection leaks that are really just ‘wiggling loose’ over time?

This scenario must first be categorized in terms of its underlying failure mechanism. An underlying question to answer when categorizing a failure mechanism as either time independent or time dependent is ‘if there have been no changes in any forces, then why did it fail today instead of yesterday?’. When a fitting or appurtenance has performed […]