Effects of Management and Organisational Variables in Risk Assessment

The standard Quantitative Risk Assessment approach includes the estimation of accidental frequencies; these are a function of various parameters such as components failure rates, probabilities of human error, equipment damage and managerial factors. The availability of general values from the literature for such parameters simplifies the risk analysis, but unfortunately provides standardised results which do not permit taking into consideration the plant specificity. If managerial and organizational factors are neglected or not proper assessed, risk analysis for two identical establishments, characterised by totally different management systems, gives the same results and this appears absolutely unacceptable especially when risk analysis is used as a tool for risk-based decisions. This paper aims quantifying the effects of managerial and organizational variables on the frequency of losses of containment in pipeworks, by using a simple and flexible method developed by Milazzo et al. Such a methodology has been tested on a new case-study and results have been evaluated from both the sensitivity and uncertainty point of views.