DEVELOPING OPTIONS FOR CHANGES

Investigation Catalyst helps investigators or analysts identify any candidate changes that might improve performance, evaluate and rank each, and select the most effective, efficient performance improvement actions. The option development task is described in the Risk Reduction Strategies section of the Recommendation Development Tutorial.

The task is best performed when all the problems have been found, but may be performed whenever a problem is identified if the need for action is urgent, as after an accident.

Investigation Catalyst Diamond Options panel provides a workspace for the Analyst to record and assess any actions that can be devised to eliminate or control the defined problem.

Default criteria are provided for evaluating and ranking each option identified. Users can substitute their own criteria if desired.

The software also provides for the consideration of any tradeoffs that argue in favor of or opposed to implementation of the higher ranked changes, to arrive at selection of the "best" option.

The Options panel provides default attributes for evaluating an option, and provides for users to substitute their own attributes for this task. The Options workspace can be used at any time during the investigation if restart or other interim needs require defined problems to be addressed quickly.

The Options default evaluation attributes help investigators distinguish between options that would improve performance from those that would not.

During construction and system start-ups, the attributes assigned may need to be reviewed if surprises occur, to determine what updates might be necessary.

During implementation or ongoing operations, the documented rationale for the evaluations may have to be updated as needed to accommodate the new observations.

Whenever an accident investigation discloses new hazards and introduces the need for modification of the current Matrix, the prior analyses of changes should be reviewed

In preparations for shutdowns, users should review the Matrix and Diamonds to determine if shutdown procedures are compatible with prior hazard analyses, and if so the above change development process should be repeated.

The computerized Matrix and Diamonds summary can make these follow-up analyses very efficient, if the matrixes are kept current.