Risk Engineering Position Paper: Management of Change (MoC)

During the lifetime of a site operating process plant, many changes will occur. These could be changes to the physical hardware of the plant, the control systems, the business processes used, or to the organisation running the plant.

Each one of these changes has the potential to increase the risks involved in operating the plant, for example, through:

• Inadequate identification or evaluation of the risks of making the change.
• Inadequate physical design or execution of the change.
• Inadequate communication and documentation of the change.

It is well-documented that poor control of plant changes has contributed significantly to large loss events in industry. A number of these examples are given throughout this paper. The need to avoid such incidents and maintain good process safety management is the reason why all sites operating process plant need a robust Management of Change (MoC) process.

This position paper aims to define the key attributes that would be rated by Marsh as very good for a Management of Change (MoC) system in the oil, gas, and petrochemical industry. These attributes reflect those in the Marsh Energy Risk Ranking criteria. They can be used to support and define risk improvement recommendations and also to provide detailed advice to clients seeking to improve their management systems.