DHA Examination Topics
Certification Examination Topics Covered
Click below for lists of examination topics for the certification of interest.
Certified DHA Practitioner (CDP®)
Examinees should ensure they are thoroughly familiar with the following topics:
- Combustible dust hazards
- Terminology
- Types
- Requirements for hazards to occur
- NFPA combustible dust standards
- Applicability
- Objectives
- DHA requirement
- Team leader
- Team members
- Hazard identification
- Presence of dusts
- Combustibility of dusts
- DHA
- Team leader qualifications
- Pre-requisites
- Steps to perform
- Documentation
- Prevention and mitigation of combustible dust hazards
- Inherently safer design
- Protection measures
- Dust risk assessment
- Meaning
- Basis
- Risk matrices
- S and L estimates
- ALARP
- Follow-up for DHA studies
Certified DHA Specialist (CDS®)
Examinees should ensure they are thoroughly familiar with the examination topics. Various topics from the CDP® examination are addressed along with the following additional topics:
- Process safety concepts
- Meaning of process safety
- Process hazard analysis
- Hazard
- Hazard scenario
- Initiating events and causes
- Intermediate events
- Safeguards
- Enablers
- Receptors and consequences
- Hazardous conditions
- Hazardous events
- Independent and dependent failures
- Common cause failures
- Random and systematic failures
- Process safety time
- Risk
- Severity
- Likelihood
- Frequency and probability
- Probability of failure on demand
- Frequency of dangerous failure
- Safety availability
- Risk reduction factor
- Risk criteria
- Tolerable risk
- Conducting PHA to facilitate LOPA
- Information needed for LOPA
- Problems to avoid
- LOPA
- Purpose
- Elements involved
- Meaning of protection layers
- Types of protection layers
- Independent protection layers
- Benefits
- Applications and uses
- Limitations
- Relationship to PHA
- Relationship to IEC 61511 / ISA 84
- Meaning of safety instrumented system (SIS)
- Meaning of safety instrumented function (SIF)
- Meaning of safety integrity level (SIL)
- Role of SISs and SIFs in process safety
- Implementation
- Issues
- Challenges
- Guidelines
- Pitfalls
- Auditing IPLs
- Study preparation
- Information and failure data needed
- Collection and selection of information and data
- Team members
- Selection of scenarios
- Study performance
- Consequence types
- Consequence endpoints
- Estimating consequence severities
- Identification of enablers
- Addressing enablers
- Identification of IPLs
- IPL qualification criteria
- Estimating scenario likelihoods
- Estimating scenario risks
- Judging tolerability of risk
- Verification of results
- Follow-up
- Study documentation and reporting
- Use of worksheets
- Report contents
- IPL documentation
- Risk
- Definitions
- Impact measures
- Individual risk
- Group Risk
- Forms of risk measures
- Need of criteria
- Use of criteria
- Factors in setting criteria
- Allocation of criteria
- Scallingf of criteria
- Risk aversion
- Risk calculation
- Risk offsets
- Peak risk
- Risk qualities
- ALARP principle
- Meaning
- Use
- f-N and F-N curves
- Limit lines
- Consideration of uncertainties
- Treatment in PHA
- PHA on procedures
- PHA on batch and non-steady-state process
- Reactive chemical hazards
- Meaning
- Types
- Characteristics
- Importance
- Control and mitigation
- Treatment in PHA
- LOPA and PHA
- LOPA and IEC 61511 / ISA 84
- Meaning of safety instrumented system, safety instrumented function and safety integrity level
- Performance of PHA in preparation for LOPA
- Bow tie diagrams
- Purpose
- Structure and elements
- Features
- Benefits
- Use
Certified DHA Expert (CDE®)
Examinees should ensure they are thoroughly familiar with the examination topics. Various topics from the CDP® and CDS® examinations are addressed along with the following additional topics:
- Leadership, management and facilitation of PHA studies
- Meaning
- Styles
- Human factors in preparation and performance of PHA
- Psychological factors that influence PHA
- Heuristics
- Cognitive biases
- Pitfalls
- Decision Making in PHA
- Managing conflict in PHA teams