Risk and reliability studies are increasingly being considered for offshore facilities as a means to provide a rational basis for decision making in both areas: structural and operational. In this paper, an approach to schedule maintenance works for equipment on a marine platform is proposed. The formulation considers the balance between safety and cost and both variables are treated into a probabilistic framework. The results may be used to target optimal scheduling for the maintenance of the equipment that performs routine operations on a typical offshore platform in Mexico.
To be effective, risk management requires the quantitative assessment Of the likelihood and consequences of events that may cause fatalities, injuries, damage, interruption of production, etc. This assessments may sensibilize the operators and managers of facilities -in a cost-effective way- to discriminate among a set of alternative measures to anticipate, prevent and mitigate the occurrence and consequences of those undesirable events according to the specific risks and available resources for the facilities under their care. Structural and operational risks and their influence on the development of design and requalification guidelines for offshore structures have been previously addressed (Committee on Reliability .... 1983; Bea, et al.. 1984: Sthal 1986: Paliou, et al., 1987 and Moan. 1994). However the task of the quantitative assessment of operational risks is still an open field for research and refinement. Because of the enormous production level in some platforms, such as the Pol-A compression platform (300 million c. f. of sour gas and 30 million c. f. of combustible gas per day) special care should be exercised to protect and properly maintain the equipment related with lilt: product processing.
