Process Hazard Analysis (PHA) (or, Process Hazard Evaluation) is a set of organized and systematic assessments of the potential hazards associated with an industrial process. A PHA provides information intended to assist managers and employees in making decisions for improving safety and reducing the consequences of unwanted or unplanned releases of hazardous chemicals. A PHA is directed toward analyzing potential causes and consequences of fires, explosions, releases of toxic or flammable chemicals and major spills of hazardous chemicals, and it focuses on equipment, instrumentation, utilities, human actions, and external factors that might impact the process.
There are a variety of methodologies that can be used to conduct a PHA, including but not limited to: Checklist, What if?, What if?/Checklist, Hazard and Operability Study, and Failure Mode and Effects Analysis. PHA methods are qualitative in nature. The selection of a methodology to use depends on a number of factors, including the complexity of the process, the length of time a process has been in operation and if a PHA has been conducted on the process before, and if the process is unique, or industrially common. Other methods such as Layer of Protection Analysis (LOPA) or Fault Tree Analysis (FTA) may be used after a PHA if the PHA team could not reach a risk decision for a give scenario.
In the United States, the use of PHAs is mandated by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) in its Process Safety Management regulation for the identification of risks involved in the design, operation, and modification of processes that handle highly hazardous chemicals.
Famous quotes containing the words process, hazard and/or analysis:
“That which endures is not one or another association of living forms, but the process of which the cosmos is the product, and of which these are among the transitory expressions.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)
““Who chooseth me must give and hazard all he hath.”
Must give—for what? for lead, hazard for lead?
This casket threatens. Men that hazard all
Do it in hope of fair advantages;
A golden mind stoops not to shows of dross.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“... the big courageous acts of life are those one never hears of and only suspects from having been through like experience. It takes real courage to do battle in the unspectacular task. We always listen for the applause of our co-workers. He is courageous who plods on, unlettered and unknown.... In the last analysis it is this courage, developing between man and his limitations, that brings success.”
—Alice Foote MacDougall (1867–1945)