Risk Management – a whole of project perspective

AS4360 Risk Management

In line with the basic premise of AS4360 that “˜…risk management should become part of an organisation’s culture …’ and “˜… be integrated into the organisation’s philosophy, practices and business plans …’ NQGP established a risk management plan early in the Project. An initial risk management workshop commenced the process and a database was used to monitor the risks. The risk levels set were taken from AS4360 and a monitoring process set up whereby the Alliance Management Team (AMT) reviewed the high and moderate risks on a monthly basis and all risks quarterly. Risks were reviewed for change and where actions were taken to mitigate risks these were tracked and monitored and reported on monthly.

AS2885 Pipeline – Gas and Liquid Petroleum

AS2885 is the key compliance document for all gas pipelines in Australia. Part 1 Section 2 of AS2885 requires that “˜… the design process shall include specific steps for the assessment of risks associated with the pipeline and the measures to be included for managing those risks.’ Key steps in this risk assessment process are the location and threat analysis. NQGP Project used the GIS database, with some additional tools, as the main mechanism for the location and threat analysis. A risk assessment analysis was made for each location and threat. This meant that changes in class location and other threats that could arise during design or operation could be identified and the affected areas of the pipeline reviewed and the risk assessment at those locations performed again considering the new threats. The requirements for reviewing risks can be much more easily identified visually using the mapping information in the GIS than by descriptions of features at KP’s. This was an advantage during design, when the route undergoes a number of changes, as only the affected areas needed to be reviewed. The use of the GIS database eliminated constant rewrites and reprints of the threat analysis that normally occurs during route design. Utilising the GIS enabled the risks to be reviewed against a location by overlaying the new route on the already available data.

Whilst the requirements of the AS2885 risk assessment were handled by the engineering team, the overall compliance and authorisation requirements of AS2885 were managed by the operations team. The benefits of this were that both Part 1 (design and construction) and Part 3 (operations and maintenance) were managed concurrently. This gave an independent and overarching approach to the compliance aspects of the standard. A matrix of AS2885 compliance requirements was developed and used throughout the Project and into commissioning to ensure that all requirements were met and closed out.

Compliance was managed by firstly identifying compliance requirements and then developing a monitoring process. Compliance commitments were either assigned actions and closed out or alternatively put into procedures or other documents. Continual monitoring on a roughly monthly basis was conducted throughout the Project, and external audits were used to verify that compliance with all commitments was being achieved.

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