Skip to content
HomeServicesQuantitative Risk Assessment and FERA Training
Advanced 3 days

Quantitative Risk Assessment and FERA Training

Reading a QRA, challenging one, and knowing what actually moved the answer

A QRA produces numbers that look authoritative and are built on assumptions that often are not stated. Delegates learn how individual and societal risk are calculated, what the difference between location based risk and IRPA does to a result, and which inputs genuinely control the outcome.

This course sits alongside our Quantitative Risk Assessment consulting work, so what is taught is what we do.

Who should attend

Process safety engineers who commission, review or defend QRA studies
Project and design engineers using QRA output for layout and siting decisions
Regulatory affairs staff preparing safety cases and consent applications
Risk managers interpreting risk results for investment decisions

Course content

Every module is taught with worked examples and exercises drawn from real plant, and adapted to your own process where the course runs in house.

1

The structure of a study

  • Failure case selection and why the case list decides the answer before anything is modelled
  • Release frequency data sources and what each one actually counted
  • Event trees from release through to outcome
  • Where uncertainty enters and how it compounds
2

Individual risk

  • Location based individual risk as a property of the map
  • Individual risk per annum and the occupancy factor that converts between them
  • Risk contours, how they are drawn and how they are misread
  • Comparing a result against a criterion that was written for the other measure
3

Societal risk

  • Cumulative F N curves and why every point includes everything to its right
  • Population data, day and night distributions and indoor versus outdoor
  • Criterion lines, slope and the aversion argument behind them
  • Reading where on the curve the risk is actually being driven
4

Consequence modelling inputs

  • Discharge, dispersion, fire and explosion model selection
  • Weather sets and stability class, and their effect on the result
  • Probit functions turning a dose into a fatality probability
  • Sensitivity testing that shows what the answer really depends on
5

Fire and explosion risk analysis

  • Escalation and domino assessment between inventories
  • Impairment criteria for occupied buildings, escape routes and control rooms
  • Blast overpressure and thermal radiation acceptance levels
6

Reviewing a study critically

  • The questions that expose a weak study quickly
  • Checking that assumptions are stated rather than embedded
  • Judging whether a recommendation follows from the analysis

What you receive

  • A QRA review checklist for commissioning and challenging studies
  • Worked individual and societal risk calculations
  • A sensitivity analysis worked example
  • Assessment result and attendance record

What changes afterwards

  • Your team can challenge a consultant's QRA instead of accepting the summary table
  • Risk results get compared against the criterion they were actually written for
  • Layout and siting decisions rest on the part of the analysis that drives them
  • Safety case submissions survive regulatory questioning

Standards and references

We teach Quantitative Risk Assessment and FERA Training against CCPS Guidelines for Chemical Process Quantitative Risk Analysis and the codes listed with it, at the edition current when you run it.

CCPS Guidelines for Chemical Process Quantitative Risk AnalysisPurple Book CPR 18E for quantitative risk assessment methodologyAPI RP 752, 753 and 756 for occupied building assessmentUK HSE guidance on societal risk and tolerability

Run Quantitative Risk Assessment and FERA Training for your team

We will come back with dates, the pre-reading it needs and a cost per head. Tell us who is attending, what they already do day to day and whether you want it at your site or delivered online.

Ask about dates and cost