Portfolio Risk Management for Process Safety

A majority of PSM tools and risk methodologies are focused on risks at individual sites or process units. For example, PHA risk ranking matrices are frequently cast in terms of consequences that occur at a plant level. However, corporations with many operating facilities need to find ways to understand and manage process risk across the entire enterprise. Effective management of process plant risks is likely to involve a mix of several strategies including risk avoidance, risk reduction, risk transfer (loss insurance) and risk retention (intentional and unintentional). In practice the mix will result from activities at a number of a number of levels within the firm, ranging from risk managers who deal with insurance aspects - probably on an aggregate corporate basis, to plant level engineers responsible for safe operation of section of individual plants. The paper discusses a framework for analysis of process facility risk which enables the mix of risk strategies to be evaluated and selected on a coherent basis at a variety of organizational levels.