211 A Framework to Support Management of Change Based on the Risk Management Information (PSAM-0114) Available to Purchase

Most of process safety management (PSM) in chemical plant is discussed at the plant design activities such as risk assessment and safety design which considers the countermeasures for the risk reduction. Then, the plant is constructed based on the detailed design information such as PFD (Process Flow Diagram) and P&ID (Piping & Instrumented Diagram) and pre-start-up test is carried out before actual production operation. Furthermore, the revamp for the improvement of safety is also repeated during the operation and the maintenance activities. In this way, wide-ranging PSM techniques are integrated as results of such comprehensive deliberation.

On the other hand, there are many cases which the plants are changed for the actual plant site convenience and are not constructed as the diagram or the specification of the original design. Recently, many accidents have been caused by the failures of management of change (MOC). One reason is that the environment which can share the information on risk management through the plant life cycle (PLC) does not exist. For this reason, even if each activity such as design, operation and maintenance has done based on each logical idea, the underlying intent of other activities could not be understood each other. It results in some differences among the design concepts, the actual plant structure, the plant operation policy, etc. To make things worse, the results of changes are also not updated to the plant information and known to the persons involved. For example, the operators try to change the raw material or the operation procedure at on-site of the plant under this condition. But they cannot reassess the plant for safety with these changes correctly, because they don't understand the original plant design intents and concepts which engineers has considered. In fact, such careless changes cause higher risk for the following plant operation and maintenance activities and lead to some troubles or severe accidents.

In the previous researches, plant activity models have been made to develop the infrastructure to share the technical information through the PLC. Under this technical information infrastructure, this paper proposes the framework to support the MOC program by using the information on risk management through the PLC. The focus of this framework is to clarify the important check points which should be managed with changes in a manner consistent with the plant structure, the process behavior and the operation. This is achieved by reusing the recorded information on risk management through the PLC, including information on the theoretical thinking process and the design concepts which are discussed at the plant design stage. And the information on the past operation histories and the troubles or the accident scenarios of other similar plants is also important for reevaluation of the objective plant. This can make it possible to provide the objects to be managed and the purposes of reevaluation of it and to prevent accidents with the careless change at the plant operation site. Furthermore, the result of reevaluation should be also updated as the additional or the modified information with the change of design or operation. This framework also helps the development of systems to support the PSM through the PLC. A simple process has been used for explanation of the effective reuse of the information on risk management by the proposed method.