Operational and Risks Analysis in the discipline of instrumentation and control

Abstract

Into Engineering for Process Control and Instrumentation, I&C engineers have to work on the documentation and specifications that, normally at the begining, come from Conceptual Engineering Stage. The Process Flow Diagram PFD, is one of the most important documents for developing the P&ID document. That way, the primary task for I&C engineer is to gather information about Automatic control and process instrumentation requests, from the Process engineer. However, there are requests that are not easy to uncover, since they would be along with several others disciplines involved; for instance: the piping engineers realizes the risk of Waterhammer, thus the Control Engineer have to avoid that the flow control loop closes the control valve suddenly, in order to avoid the Waterhammer risk. This article is about the hazard operations analysis (HAZOP), as a fundamental task to have to consider for the Process control and Instrumentation Engineer, in order to avoid mistakes design. In this article we want to establish the HAZOP's considerations and its importance to I&C engineering. This respect to its relevance to any sort of Industry (not only O&G); and also to establish the best moment during de engineering process, among the differences stages of the project, for scheduling the HAZOP appointment in order to both improve the I&C discipline and fulfill the safety standard (to meet the OSHA[1] standard).