Hazard identification
There is one interesting point that may have occurred to you in the above discussion of potential problem analysis. What do you put as the 'hazard' at the top of the table? You see, we selected 'fire in a multi-storey office building' as our hazard to be analysed. But we could have concentrated on a level above or below this. For example, we could considered the building itself as a hazard, or we could have considered smoke from the fire as a hazard.
Hazard: The existence of a multi-storey office building
If the building itself was the hazard, then the potential problems might have been:
- building collapse;
- bomb threat;
- power failure;
- fire;
- air conditioning failure.
Then the causes of each of these problems could be determined, and appropriate preventative and contingent actions developed.
This, you see, is working at a higher level or with wider scope than the example we have worked with.
Hazard: Smoke in a multi-storey office building
On the other hand, it is possible to analyse a hazard at a lower level or with narrower scope than our example. You could, in fact, say that smoke itself was the hazard, and consider the potential problems, causes and appropriate actions for this.
The level at which you use the technique of potential problem analysis will be determined by the scope and the objectives of your project. And you stop the analysis when it fails to yield any more useful results.
Converging strategies
Another interesting feature of potential problem analysis is that you will finally keep coming up with the same set of preventative and contingent actions for different potential problems. This is to be expected. There is only a finite number of strategies for dealing with any complex set of problems, and many of the strategies will be applicable to quite different problems. Therefore don’t be concerned or worried if this happens. It is quite normal.
