Are You Giving it a High Enough Priority?

42-16875144Change control or change management is a critical component of any operating system - be that a process plant, a design office or a software program. Despite this, it is very often overlooked, or treated as a low priority. Taking this approach towards change management is a recipe for disaster.

Change control is simply the process of assessing, documenting and approving any changes that are made to a particular system. For a successful change control system you need a documented procedure and an owner. There is no value in having a change control procedure in place that no-one follows - the owner is there to ensure the procedure is being followed and maintain the focus on the system. I will expand on this in a minute, but first we should discuss what is considered a "change".

One of the most important parts of a change control procedure is the definition of what actually constitutes a change. This will be different for many different sites, based on the accepted risks involved. You may also have different definitions for different situations, for example equipment, people or processes.

A good definition for equipment is "anything that requires the equipment to operate outside its normal operating or design parameters". For processes it may be something like "anything outside the control limits of the existing plant". The important thing is that you define what you mean by change, and have it in writing.

A Change Control Procedure

As mentioned above, there are 3 main parts to a procedure - Assessment, Documentation and Approval.

Assessment

This is really the point of the whole system - go through the proposed change methodically and think about the follow on effects in the other parts of the system. Ideally, this should involve a number of people from different backgrounds. In a heavy industry situation, this would mean a representative from electrical, mechanical, process and operations for example. This reduces the chance of missing something important out.

Another good idea is to have a prompt sheet. This should really be part of your procedure, and is basically a few sheets with a group of questions broken down into categories such as safety, training, stored energy, physical limitations etc.

The assessment also ensures that any designs have been reviewed adequately, as this should be a requirement for approval

Documentation

A Change control procedure needs to be formalised in writing. This should include definitions of what a change is as discussed above, what type of review is required for each level of risk and things like what type of people are required to sign off. The procedure should also have a prompt sheet and an approval document which should have signatures from each discipline involved.

Authorisation

This is basically the person responsible for the plant or system saying "I know what you are planning on doing and I understand and accept the risks". For a high risk change this should be a managers sign off, for lower risks this can be the change control system owner.

Owner

To ensure that your system is being used and is up to date, you need to nominate an owner, and hold him or her responsible for the system. The owner needs to be passionate about change control, and should encourage others to be also. They need to have a good understanding of the plant or area also, as they will often be the person deciding initially what the risks are and therefore what level of review is required. This person needs to be actively involved in projects and ensuring that changes aren't being made "on the run" without the proper authority and followup.

This may seem like a lot of trouble, and this is the reason often given for not maintaining a good change control system. The response to this argument is to think about the consequences of not doing change control. An extra couple of man hours pales in significance when compared to an employee getting hurt or a structure failing due to an interaction being overlooked or.