After holding user meetings in Europe over the past two years, the 2005 Safeti User Group meeting was hosted by Rohm and Haas at its facility in Bristol, Pennsylvania, USA. A very interesting Quantitative Risk Analysis presentation given by DuPont was the highlight of an extremely productive meeting.
The change in venue attracted a different group of attendees, allowing some topics to be reviewed from previous years. For example, the addition of user-defined effect zones was discussed and reviewed at both the 2004 and 2005 meetings, ensuring that the full range of potential customer needs for this feature will be addressed.
This year’s highlight was a customer presentation given by Gary Staton of DuPont, entitled ‘Quantitative Risk analysis of a Complex Chemical Process and Utilising the Results for Risk Reduction Decisions’. This presentation showed how DuPont has used Safeti to compare the risk at plants in very different locations, and DNV Software would like to extend their thanks to Gary Staton for this informative presentation.
Following the well attended Phast training at the Sunoco refinery in Philadelphia and the recent Global Process Safety Symposium in Atlanta, at which we introduced our Process Business Risk prototype and presented our paper 'Beyond Compliance – The Future Role of Risk Tools?’, DNV Software held its 31st Safeti User Group meeting on 19 April.
The meeting followed a traditional user meeting format, informing attendees of new features in the current release during the morning session, then moving on to discuss ongoing developments and other planned work in the afternoon. These discussions were arranged in three sessions; items planned for the standard maintenance release were presented first, followed by product add-ons in separate sessions. The product add-ons included Multi-Component calculations for use with risk and consequence modelling, and Multi-Energy Explosion analysis for risk calculations. The Multi-Energy Explosion modelling presentation proved to be very relevant in the current US climate.
Additional presentations by DNV covered new product releases such as the Process Business Risk tool and the availability of consequence models in spreadsheet form. In particular, the new Process Business Risk software was warmly received, with customers commenting that this will significantly advance the communication of risk to business managers.
Prior to the SUG on 18 April, an Advanced Safeti training class was given by DNV Software’s Chief Software Architect for Risk Management, Dr David Worthington. This provided a unique opportunity for in-depth discussion of the practical application of Safeti to specific customer problems.
Both attendees from DNV Software, Siobhan Scott and David Worthington, found the meeting extremely useful. David Worthington stated: “Yet again, the Safeti User Group meeting was extremely productive. This year’s meeting has given us the opportunity to learn more about our customers’ use of the software in addition to receiving feedback on recent development work. It is good to hear that we are developing new features which directly support our customers’ business needs.”
Full meeting minutes were sent to all maintained Safeti users with their May Status Note, and are available for download on the Technical Support website.