Organization of a Hazards Analysis: The Leader's Skills (Part 2)

This post is the ninth in a paid series to do with the organization and management of process hazard analyses. The following is a list of other posts in this series.

1. Organization

2. The Charge Letter

3. Preparations

4. Documentation Requirements

5. Time Required, Kick-Off, Closeout and Walk Abouts

6. The Team

7. The Team Leader / Facilitator

8. The Leader’s Skills (Part 1)

9. The Leader’s Skills (Part 2)

10. The Scribe (this one)

11. Specialist Support

12. Sophisticated Language

In this post we continue the discussion regarding the skills required of an effective team leader/facilitator.

Regardless of where he or she comes from, a good PHA leader needs to possess the following skills.

• How to lead a multi-discipline team,

• How to use the PHA software,

• Be able to write a readable report quickly,

• Understand how to read P&IDs and data sheets.

• Understand operator jargon, and

• Assess the quality of proposed ideas.

Additional attributes of a good leader include the following.

Generalizations

Effective team leaders develop generalizations from the hazards analysis discussion. For example, the leader may note that many of the identified hazards could be mitigated with better operating procedures. This finding indicates that a general recommendation concerning upgrading procedures may be in order.

When presenting the final report to management the leader should provide a few succinct generalizations to do with the findings of the analysis. For example, after one lengthy hazards analysis the leader made a 30-minute presentation to management that summarized many of the 46 recommendations (some of which addressed high risk hazards) under the word ‘instrumentation’. He noted that a large percentage of the identified hazards were attributable to outdated or inadequate instrumentation systems, and suggested that management consider development of a high-level strategy for improving the quality of the plant’s instrumentation.