WHAT Makes a good HAZOP Chair?

The age old question in process safety discussions …

What qualifications, skills and experience are needed to be an effective HAZOP chair?

There are a lot of strong opinions here, with varying suggestions of arbitrary minimum levels of experience. For us, this is much less important than a few key interpersonal and analytical / technical skills:

- The ability to distil a process down to the key process parameters and characteristics that help reveal when deviations can become hazardous. It's unlikely a HAZOP chair will have all the technical knowledge for every scenario they encounter, but they need to understand the engineering to know when things are actually an issue.

- The ability to identify when a viewpoint is not grounded in any scientific or engineering basis. Opinions and causal relationships creep in to HAZOPS and can often be passed off as scientific fact. These need to be confidently challenged.

- The ability to recognise when quieter members of the team have something more to say. This is harder to achieve in remote studies, so often needs a check-in to ask specifically if they have anything to add. The important bit here is knowing everyone's role in the team, and in relation to the process being assessed.

- The ability to speed up and slow down the assignment to meet both the schedule AND ensure time is not wasted on unrelated topics/ issues leading to no hazard.

- The ability to keep control of the room and keep the team focused on what the goals of the study are, which can vary wildly depending on the type of assessment/ scope.

- Knowing when the team needs a break. You don't need to be a regular feature at your local comedy cub, but a well placed HAZOP themed joke always goes down a treat!

- And last, but certainly not least, coffee. You always need good coffee.

There are probably loads more, but these are a few key areas we try to stay on top of to keep out studies of the highest quality.