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Process Safety Progress, Vol.25, No.1, 78-82, 2006
A time-saving approach for separating and focusing on human factors checklist discussion questions
The approach proposed in this report saves valuable process hazards analysis (PHA) team meeting time by quantifying and helping to separate a usuall nonquantifable subject important process safety-related human factors issues. A human factors checklist modeled after the CCPS checklist is used and analyzed in three steps. First, operations maintenance, engineering and management personnel fill out responses to a 106-question human factors checklist. using numbers ranging from 1 ("Okay; As Is) to 5 ("Needs Work"). Second.. simple analysis on each question provided question-related averages and standard deviations. Third, histograms on these results help to identify the ranges and to reduce the number of questions discussed by the team. The questions that showed general agreement bad either high or low relative scores with low standard deviations; the questions that showed either diverse interpretations or opinions bad high standard deviations. This approach saves the costs associated with longer PHA team meeting times because the discussion focuses on specific questions (issues) instead of all of the checklist questions. (c) 2006 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Process Saf Prog 25: 78-82, 2006.