Integrating Process Hazard Management Education in Pilot Plants through a HIRA-based Methodology: A Case Study

Pilot Plants are essential in chemical engineering education, serving as a vital link between academic theory and industrial application. These facilities offer students hands-on experience but also represent serious safety risks, often without a structured approach to hazard management. This study presents a practical and affordable methodology, adapted from OSHA’s Process Safety Management (PSM) and based on Hazard Identification and Risk Management (HIRA), to improve safety in the Pilot Plant at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia. The approach involved a two-phase workshop with faculty/staff and students to evaluate hazard perception, rank risks by impact and frequency, and analyze equipment subunits through a weighted scoring system. The results made it possible to build a comprehensive risk heatmap of the building and identify crucial areas that require attention. In particular, the highest risk zone was found in the Distillation Columns area (Continuous, Extractive, Reactive, Batch with a Hazard Category 5), leading to early alerts and guiding resource usage for risk mitigation. The methodology showed high reproducibility among experienced personnel and helped highlight differences in risk perception between faculty/staff and students. By integrating this tool into training, laboratories can significantly reduce hazards while strengthening safety awareness in future engineers.