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G E N E R A L FA C T S H E E T
Criticality and vulnerability assessment
There is never a shortage of problems to resolve,
but there are always limitations on the resources
available whether they be money, time or personnel.
One of the most difficult questions that has to be
answered on plant is ‘Where do we focus our
resources?’ This appears to be a simple question,
but it is often very complex to answer due to a
diverse set of drivers including safety, health and
environment, production, customer demands and
maintenance.
Criticality and vulnerability assessments answer this
question while looking at how the risks are being
managed and where the gaps are.
— An assessment can be used to:
“A thorough methodology that has
helped to identify which areas are
critical and need urgent attention”
ABB’s criticality and vulnerability
assessment is a structured and
rapid assessment tool used to
prioritise plant areas, systems or
equipment items.
What we offer
ABB’s criticality and vulnerability assessment
process establishes the relative priority of plant
areas, systems and equipment items in a semi-
quantitative manner using specially constructed
word-models. It is carried out by a joint ABB / client
team which, for each item, works to identify:
-- The credible failure modes
-- The various realistic consequences of these
failures
-- Likelihood of each failure and the factors
influencing it
-- Actions to reduce the risk or criticality for the
items
-- Evaluate how well the risk of failure is being
managed
-- Assess and communicate the consequences and
relative risk of failure from a SHE, customer,
production and maintenance perspective
-- Identify equipment with high risk or potentially
high consequences of failure
-- Identify actions to prevent or mitigate the effects
of failure
— Benefits
Additional benefits of criticality and vulnerability analysis.
-- Gaining an understanding of the risks associated
with potential failures and of the relative
importance of plant systems or equipment
-- The ability to justify focusing limited resources -
money, time and personnel -on high criticality
items to achieve maximum benefit in areas such
as reliability improvement, or shutdown work
scope management

Why ABB?
ABB brings a vast amount of experience in
designing and facilitating criticality and
vulnerability studies from numerous industry
sectors to ensure that they deliver maximum benefit
for the resources utilised.
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Typical criticality analysis output.
ABB also takes a flexible approach, adapting the
standard methodology and assessment criteria to
ensure that a specific client issue is fully considered.

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Typical criticality and vulnerability analysis output.

Integrity management/PRS121a/07/19

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