Whiteboard Discussion: A Fundamental RBI Metric

Back at the Whiteboard, Inspectioneering Chief Editor Greg Alvarado discusses the concept of "risk in square feet per year", a powerful metric found in the API RP 581 Risk Based Inspection methodology. Understanding metrics such as this one will allow you to begin trending your risks, identifying best practices, and feeling comfortable with the decisions you are making in your facility or corporation. Armed with this type of information, users can track risk reduction for a component or aggregate the risk of subsystems and systems over time and compare the risk reduction versus costs for various risk mitigation options. This metric enables the analyst to determine additional valuable metrics such as what percentages of equipment are contributing the lion's share of risk and what those specific pieces of equipment are, enabling them to focus on the few pieces that contribute the greatest amount of risk. Drilling down into this metric enables identification of risk drivers, the use of Probability of Failure (PoF) for reliability comparisons across a plant or corporation, and similar process units, etc.