Our Stories

A collection of our Blogs, Articles, and Whitepapers

Understanding Flammable Mist Explosion Hazards

While there is extensive testing and validation of hazards from flammable vapors, less information is available regarding flammable...

A Tale of Two BPCS Credits, A Bayesian Case Study

Have you ever had the problem of having a perfectly functional BPCS* interlock that you know is highly failure immune, yet when it comes...

Using the STAMP Systems-Based Approach to Identify Hazards for the Transient Operating State

STAMP (Systems Theoretic Accident Model and Processes) is a relatively new accident causality model based on systems theory. It draws its...

How Can I Effectively Place My Gas Detectors

Instrumentation, Reduction of Risk, Risk Assessment, Protection, Detection System, Alarms and Operator Interventions, Detector, Gas Detecti

Does Your Facility Have the Flu? Use Bayes Rule to Treat the Problem Instead of the Symptom

Is our industry addressing the problems facing it today? We idealize infinitesimally small event rates for highly catastrophic hazards,...

Designing Operator Tasks to Minimize the Impact of Heuristics and Biases

This paper proposes a combined approach of discussing the cognitive psychology behind System 1 and System 2 thinking, the types of heuristic

Improving Barrier Effectiveness using Human Factors Methods

by Dave Grattan The Process Industry has an established practice of identifying barriers to credit as IPLs (Independent protection...

Improving Human Factors Review in PHA and LOPA

Having a working knowledge of these five tools will improve a PHA‐LOPA facilitator’s awareness and ability to better evaluate human error re

Reverend Bayes, Meet Process Safety-Use Bayes’ Theorem to Establish Site Specific Confidence in LOPA

Bayes’ Theorem is sorely missing from the toolbox of Process Safety practitioners. This paper will introduce Bayes’ Theorem to the reader an

The use of Bayesian Networks in Functional Safety - Whitepaper

Functional safety engineers follow the ISA/IEC 61511 standard and perform calculations based on random hardware failures. These result in...