Background

Abnormal situations encompass a range of events outside the “normal” plant operating modes, e.g. trips, fires, explosions, toxic releases or just not reaching planned targets. In the past incidents such as Piper Alpha, Milford Haven, Flixborough, Texas City and the 2003 northeast electrical blackout have all been attributed, at least in part, to a fundamental lack of good situational awareness. Early work of the Abnormal Situation Management Consortium® included a survey of the US petrochemical industry. Based on their research the consortium estimates industry losses of around $20 billion per year from abnormal situations, approximately equal to the total annual profits of that industry. Furthermore these studies indicate that companies achieving Best Practices in operations can improve productivity by 5-12%.


Service Description

Our two-day Situational Awareness Workshop provides an overview of the key elements that impact successful control room design. This workshop incorporates the findings from the research of the Abnormal Situation Management Consortium® as it applies to operator situation awareness. The workshop will be tailored toward the decisions and challenges faced by the Client while approaching a control building project, and will be an excellent starting point for discussion within the organization. This will also facilitate the discussions that will occur during the Conceptual Design process.

The workshop covers the following topics: