Verifying Process Safety Requirements: Similarities Between Aerospace and Oil & Gas Industries

Abstract

This paper describes improvements to the methods for verification of process safety design requirements in an Oil & Gas (O&G) project and highlights the benefits of standardized verification linked to design requirements. The similarities and benefits of verification activities used in aerospace/NASA projects are also discussed. The team identified and documented the activities that should be performed by a project throughout the project life cycle to verify compliance with process safety requirements. These verification activities were tied to existing project deliverables and controls where possible. Focusing on verification in the design stage (analyze, calculate, review) in preference to final execution (inspect, certify) enables earlier identification of problems, earlier intervention, and increases confidence that the process safety requirements have been met. While this approach may be new in the O&G industry, the aerospace community has used similar methods for decades. Verification within aerospace/NASA involves design phase verification and product (final) verification. Initial verification is done to show that: 1) the design is realizable, 2) requirements are acceptable and have bidirectional traceability to higher-level requirements and stakeholder expectations, and 3) the design solution is consistent with requirement statements and constraints. Conducting the initial verification through peer/design reviews improves compliance to requirements at the final product verification. By establishing the traceability during the initial verification, database links are established and then just need to be populated with the final verification reports for closure. During verification activities, identification of critical systems and safety hazard controls are introduced and considered to influence the design and eventually become part of the verification evidence. Projects select pre-identified verification activities, which will then be used to generate an executable plan. The plan is used to sort/filter the statements and allocate them to the right scope elements and party to provide verification. Standardizing verification eliminates engineering hours for engineering contractors and suppliers. Completed verification plans increase company knowledge regarding requirement implementation, making the next project more efficient to execute. There is increased visibility of where the supply chain is supporting the process safety requirements. For the first time, the supply chain will confirm they have implemented the requirements and provide feedback on the clarity of the requirements. Clear confirmation that process safety requirements have been verified will drive improved safety performance. This paper provides a new approach in O&G for identifying process safety requirements and linking these requirements to standardized verification methods. Specific examples will be shared to show the similarities of the verification activities between O&G and aerospace and how the use of verification during design and use of a database to link requirements and verification evidence improves requirement compliance, including safety performance.