Key Associates

Risk Consultant Specialising in Human Factors and Process Safety (AB Risk) and Wilde Risk Management Associate

Andy is a key associate for Wilde Analysis ltd. He has a chemical engineering degree, PhD and vast experience having worked as a consultant since 1996. Andy’s consultnancy company AB Risk Limited was set up in 2005 and has been accepted as a Registered Consultancy by the Institute of Ergonomics and Human Factors (IEHF).

Andy uses his combination of engineering background and consultancy skills to assist companies to manage their risks in a sensible and cost-effective way. He works mainly in hazardous industries including the oil, gas, chemical, power and steel manufacture. With a few projects in other industries including air traffic control, food and drink, financial and waste.

Andy’s combination of academic learning and practical experience; engineering and human factors knowledge has enabled him to provide helpful and effective risk management recommendations to a range of clients in the UK, Europe and Middle East, including; Shell, BP, Centrica, Scottish and Southern Energy, Flogas, Millennium Chemicals, Tata Steel, Corus, Ensus, Lucite, Ineos, Maersk, Petrofac, Siemens, Huntsman, Veolia, Pfizer, Dragon LNG, Novartis, ConocoPhilips, Dow Corning, Kemira, OMV, Qatar Gas, Petroleum Development Oman (PDO), Kuwait National Petroleum Company (KNPC), Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) and Saudi Aramco. Also with projects deployed from the Arctic circle through to Australia.

Andy has completed offshore survival training including Basic Offshore Safety Induction and Emergency Training (BOSIET) and Minimum Industry Safety Training (MIST).

Andy is a member of the editorial panel for the Loss Prevention Bulletin and regularly write articles for the publication.

Andy was the primary author of the recently published third edition of EEMUA 201 – Control Rooms: A guide to their specification, design, commissioning, and operation.

As well as working with Wilde on consulting projects, Andy is the tutor for the EEMUA accredited training courses run by Wilde.

Bob is highly-experienced in technical safety and reliability & availability modelling in multiple industries throughout the world. Specialising in the Oil and Gas and Chemical Industries, since moving from the Nuclear industry in the 1990’s, Bob has carried out both consultancy roles and site based HSSE lead roles over the course of his career.

As a HAZOP and LOPA approved leader, Bob has experience in flammable and toxic hazard consequence modelling and use of fault tree, event tree and failure mode and effects analysis methods. Bob is also responsible for the development of technical safety tools including those for Quantified Risk Assessment, COMAH, ALARP demonstration, Functional Safety and is the author of many client safety reports.

As the Owner & Director of RGB Safety Engineering Ltd, Bob has the following skills

• Project HSSE Lead – process plant design and construction
• Extensive experience in oil & gas, process and chemicals plus nuclear / defence industries and aircraft manufacture.
• Regulatory requirements and CA / HSE liaison
• COMAH and Offshore / Onshore Safety Case Preparation
• Quantitative Risk Assessment including Fault Tree Analysis, FMEA
• Consequence modelling – fire, explosion and gas dispersion, impact for thermal, blast and toxic hazards
• Availability/ Reliability/Maintainability (ARM) modelling
• DSEAR assessments and Hazardous area classification
• Specialist risk studies (e.g. Evacuation Escape & Rescue, Survivability of Emergency Systems, Occupied Buildings, Wind Turbine risk Assessments)
• HAZOP Chairman (approved BP /Shell / Centrica)
• LOPA Chairman (approved BP)
• HAZID Chairman
• Functional Safety Engineer (TUV) SIS
• ALARP Demonstration

Principal Chartered Process Engineer with 25 years’ experience.

Exposure to design, Reliability Centred Maintenance and Lean techniques. Providing technical plant support / troubleshooting and subsequent management decisions for resolution. Extensive commissioning and validation experience in the pharmaceutical and fine chemicals sector. In addition, design career exposure within bulk gases, electronics, oil and gas upstream / downstream (refining, tank storage and blending) and recent work in the nuclear sector.

• Proven project management, practical hands-on approach, and problem-solving mind-set, thorough attention to detail, organised and methodical. Demonstrated ability to extract critical information from manufacturing databases; to enable effective and appropriate decision-making, attention to detail, resulting in engineering and operational excellence. Embraces and encourages change.
• Excellent spoken and written communication, presentations, and pleasant demeanour. Ability to meet process and project deliverables within schedule, work under pressure and within budget; practical to apply theoretical principles in order to troubleshoot and resolve operational issues to achieve output, safety and quality goals.
• Excellent interpersonal skills to work across matrixed organisational environment. Co-ordinate multiple activities concurrently. Form and fortify strong trustworthy partnerships with executive stakeholders.
• Excellent communication, influencing and nurturing skills, across all company levels. A facilitator / trainer of HAZOP / HAZID / SWIFT/ PFMEA / DFMEA / IEC61508/11 and RCM encompassing foreign assignments. Six Sigma and Lean Manufacturing tools, to develop and deliver quality, safe, robust and reliable solutions.
• Career to date is a blend of office-based, technical design deliverables, in addition to hands-on exposure install and commissioning of fast paced projects. Significant experience working as part of a team or individually to validate and optimise from relatively simple skid mounted equipment, to sizable batch and continuous plants, integrated with significant degrees of control and instrumentation complexity. Not afraid of novel technology; always thinking out the box, to comply with environmental constraints and maximise energy conservation.

Paul’s extensive experience has been gained on projects for many leading companies such as Amec Foster Wheeler, Macfarlan Smith Pharmaceuticals, DB Projects, Isola Werke UK Ltd and GlaxoSmithKline. He has completed HAZOP projects – as an Independent Process Engineer (IPE), Responsible Engineer (RE) and Chair for HAZOP / HAZID reviews. Attendance – for a variety of companies including BP, TOTAL, EnQuest, TAQA, Dana Petroleum, Ithaca Energy, Shell GPS and Talisman Energy. He has also participated in various SIL Assessments.

An experienced safety & reliability engineer with expertise in safety assessment and engineering design substantiation in support of safety cases. As a limited company contractor, Darren provides safety & reliability engineering support to clients in high-hazard industries and has proven experience of delivering projects to clients in a range of sectors, including Nuclear (Civil and Defence), Pharmaceutical / Medical, Scientific and Academia.

Furthermore, Darren is a certified Technis Reliability & Functional Safety Engineer and an exida Cybersecurity Practitioner.

Darren’s key capabilities include;

• Engineering Design Substantiation
• Functional Safety & Reliability
• Application of IEC 61508 (and sector-specific derivatives)
• IACS Cybersecurity Lifecycle
• Safety assessment and safety case production
• FMEA / FTA / RBD techniques
• HAZID / HAZOP / HAZAN studies
• Model-based design
• Peer review of design deliverables

As well as working with Wilde on consulting projects, Darren is the tutor for the Functional Safety: IEC 61513 training courses run by Wilde.

Richard is an engineering consultant specialising in the provision of System, Software, Safety and Environmental Assurance Cases; Security Accreditation Document Sets; Independent Safety Auditing (ISA); Lecturing; Air System analyses and Safety management systems.

Chartered in 1997, he has 20 years direct system engineering experience in Unmanned Air Systems (UAS), WOME, Land-systems and civilian domains including;- software safety cases (under the MRP, DO178B/C, IEC61508 and 00:055); chairing SQEP working groups and panels for Gateway Reviews, producing RMADS and SyOPs; HAZOPs & HAZIDs; acting as ISA (for 00:056, POSMS, POEMS and RTCA DO-254 & DO178B/C projects); constructing e-CASSANDRA hazard logs; and, the use of multiple risk analysis techniques such as Goal Structuring (Adelard ASCE & GSN-App), Fault-tree Analysis, FMECA, QRA, ALARP arguments and Hierarchical Task Analysis.

Richard is cognisant with many of the UK defence, civilian safety and environment standards including 00:056, 00:055, MRP, DSA Policies & Regulations, legacy JSP series, IEC 61508, and a raft of safety, security and environmental legislative requirements.

Richard’s in-depth knowledge and experience has developed from three employment fields – firstly designing, modelling and stress-testing prototype safety systems for the auto industry. Then he worked on post-accident and predictive stress analysis and computational fluid dynamics modelling for on-shore and off-shore oil, gas and fire protection pipework systems, including site inspections. For the last 16 years he has acted as a safety, environmental and audit consultant working on a variety of domain systems in the Defence sector (Air, Sea and Land) on electronics, communications and software-related projects.

Richard also has teaching experience from his previous positions as a part-time Teaching Fellow at University of York, lecturing on their prominent MSc System Safety course. As well as a guest lecturer at London University.

Richard has presented several technical papers on his core working areas in the UK, Europe and the USA. His first specialist technical book titled “Safety Cases and Safety Reports – Meaning, Motivation and Management” was published in 2006.

A Safety Risk Management Consultant with 30 years’ experience, he has a deep understanding of delivering quantitative and qualitative safety studies to national and global clients for a wide range of process, transport and power generation facilities.

With experience gained and applied in the process industries, and applying many concepts and techniques applicable to the safety of major hazard installations and operations, Phillip is skilled at gaining an understanding of each client’s particular objectives and requirements, and of the facility / operation being studied. This enables him to deliver a high value a service allowing clients to identify and understand the risks associated with their operations, to identify the risk drivers, and to manage their risks in a cost-effective manner through focusing on these risk drivers.

Examples of projects Philip has delivered are:

• HAZOP study for a British oil and gas explorer and developer
• Hazard Identification using SWIFT of a COMAH Lower Tier Site for BAE Systems’ SMITE (Submarine Machinery Installation and Test Establishment) facility at Barrow-in-Furness
• Formal Safety Assessments for a planned major offshore development.
• Facilitated HAZIDs for a range of clients in various sectors, including:
• Accommodation barge mooring adjacent to drilling rig
• Landfill Gas Production facility
• Planned Coal Bed Methane facility
• Newbuild deepwater drillship

Philip has also managed a study whose results became a key part of the 4th edition of the module code of safe practice Part 15: Area classification code for installations handling flammable fluids (EI15), widely used internationally throughout the oil, gas and process industries. He authored a procedure setting out methodologies for consultants to apply in Quantitative Risk Assessment (QRA) studies and developed intranet pages to enable colleagues across his former employer’s offices worldwide to find methodologies and data for a wide range of safety and risk studies.

Phillip is involved in training and education, delivering HAZOP, SWIFT and QRA courses.

TECHNIS consists of a single proprietor (Dr David J Smith BSc, PhD, CEng, FIET, FCQI, HonFSaRS, MIGasE) who, as well as undertaking major assignments, can call on a proven network of suitably qualified consultants and consultancies. The majority of assignments are carried out directly by David and any subcontracted tasks directly supervised by him. As past President of the Safety and Reliability Society, David has access to, and knowledge of, all the major consultants in the risk and reliability field.

DAVID (TECHNIS) has over forty years of experience in reliability and risk assessment and technical training courses. He has amassed one of the largest failure rate and failure mode data banks in the reliability profession and has developed six unique software packages which provide reliability data, reliability calculations and optimum maintenance strategies. The packages include the FARADIP software package (reliability data and failure mode analysis), COMPARE package (Quantified Reliability Maintenance calculations), BETAPLUS (an original common cause failure model), TTREE (a fault tree package), ZONECHECK (assessment of flammable atmosphere) and a LOPA – Plus (Levels of Protection Analysis) tool.

He provides the Technis Certificate (and Diploma) in Reliability and Functional Safety academically based (but nevertheless highly practical) course which is accredited by IGEM and IAQA and ESC. David has been developing courses for 35 years and is known for making things easily understood without trying to impress people with the maths. He advises against over-simplified methodologies and insists on teaching an adequate underpinning knowledge of the basics.

He has written and updated several textbooks on the above topics, one of which is in its 9th edition and is regarded as the standard work on reliability technology. He is an authority in his field having been directly concerned with reliability engineering, safety and quality since 1968.

Following senior engineering management positions in a number of large UK companies, he joined the gas industry in 1982 and managed reliability and risk work for several years. He was responsible for introducing software integrity studies into British Gas.

He chairs the IGEM (Chartered Institution of Gas Engineers and Managers) panel which develops guidelines on safety-related systems and was a founder member of the Safety Critical Systems Committee of the Institution of Electrical Engineers (now IET). He has made a major contribution to the international safety standard IEC 61508 and to related documents.

David also carries out safety studies for the UK general aviation sector and is a member of the General Aviation Safety Council.

Principal Engineer and Wilde Risk Management Associate

As a BP approved HAZOP (downstream and upstream), LOPA and Shell HAZOP team leader, Stephen has extensive experience in delivering HAZOP and LOPA studies across multiple industry sectors including oil and gas, shipping, defence, nuclear, metals refining as well as non-process applications (e.g. crowd control).

Stephen also has over 18 years’ experience delivering multiple public and in-house courses worldwide on behalf of the UK Institution of Chemical Engineers on HAZOP, HAZOP Leadership and FMEA, and is also course module director for ‘HAZOP and LOPA’ on University of Sheffield MSc/MEng programme in Process Safety & Loss Prevention.

Stephens Key capabilities & skills include HAZOP and similar studies (e.g. HAZAN, HIRA, LOPA) leadership.