Process Risk and Reliability Management

Ian Sutton

• Éditeur: Gulf Professional Publishing
• Année: 2014
• ISBN:
  9780128017968
• Édition: 2
• Sujet: Tecnología e ingeniería
• Sous-sujet: Seguridad y salud industriales

In the last twenty years considerable progress has been made in process risk and reliability management, particularly in regard to regulatory compliance. Many companies are now looking to go beyond mere compliance; they are expanding their process safety management (PSM) programs to improve performance not just in safety, but also in environmental compliance, quality control and overall profitability. Techniques and principles are illustrated with numerous examples from chemical plants, refineries, transportation, pipelines and offshore oil and gas.

This book helps executives, managers and technical professionals achieve not only their current PSM goals, but also to make the transition to a broader operational integrity strategy. The book focuses on the energy and process industries- from refineries, to pipelines, chemical plants, transportation, energy and offshore facilities. The techniques described in the book can also be applied to a wide range of non-process industries.

The book is both thorough and practical. It discusses theoretical principles in a wide variety of areas such as management of change, risk analysis and incident investigation, and then goes on to show how these principles work in practice, either in the design office or in an operating facility. The second edition has been expanded, revised and updated and many new sections have been added including: The impact of resource limitations, a review of some recent major incidents, the value of story-telling as a means of conveying process safety values and principles, and the impact of the proposed changes to the OSHA PSM standard.

• Learn how to develop a thorough and complete process safety management program.
• Go beyond traditional hazards analysis and risk management programs to explore a company's entire range of procedures, processes and management issues.
• Understand how to develop a culture of process safety and operational excellence that goes beyond simple rule compliance.
• Develop process safety programs for both onshore facilities (EPA, OSHA) and offshore platforms and rigs (BSEE) and to meet Safety Case requirements.

Chapter 1

Risk Management

The process industries handle large quantities of hazardous, flammable and explosive materials and the processes used to handle these materials are often complex and highly specialized. Hence the consequences of an incident can be very serious indeed. In order to prevent such an incident from occurring companies implement risk management/process safety management programs. This comprehensive book describes how to develop and organize such a program.

The goals of the risk management programs go beyond safety — they include environmental compliance, industrial health and hygiene, the control of economic losses and company reputation. All of these topics are discussed in the book.

Keywords

Process safety management; PSM; Process Risk Management; HSE; Safety; Environmental; Health

Chapter Outline

Introduction 1

Technical, Process, and Occupational Safety 3

Historical Development 4

Major Events 9

Health, Safety, and Environmental Programs 10

Prescriptive/Nonprescriptive 11

Process Safety Management 14

Environment 26

Quality Management 26

Risk 27

Components of Risk 28

Common Cause Events 33

Subjective Nature of Risk 34

Quantification of Risk 39

Acceptable Risk 43

Risk Matrices 47

Black Swan Events 53

Different Industries 54

Examples 60

Introduction

Facilities in the process industries typically handle large quantities of hazardous materials. The consequences of an incident involving these materials can be very serious, so it is critical that management in those industries develop and implement risk management programs. The contents of this book provide guidance as to how this can be done. Risk management covers a broad range of issues, including technical analysis, the development and use of management systems, and human behavior, so the scope of this book is broad. And the goals of risk management programs go beyond safety—which is why the title of this book was changed from Process Safety Management to Process Risk and Reliability Management. An effective risk management program considers not just safety, but also environmental impacts, economic losses, and more nebulous topics such as company reputation.

Risk management is part of the larger topics of Operational Integrity and Operational Excellence. A facility which has a high level of operational integrity is one that performs as expected in an atmosphere of “no surprises.” The facility exhibits integrity in all aspects of its operation. These programs incorporate not just process safety but also many other technical initiatives that companies have been pursuing during the last two decades in order to improve safety, environmental performance, and profitability. A partial list of such initiatives includes:

1. RAM (reliability, availability, and maintainability) programs that focus on achieving maximum profitability.

2. HSE programs covering the broad spectrum of Health, Safety, and Environmental (HSE) work.

3. Statistical process control.

4. Quality standards such as ISO 9000.

5. Occupational and behavior-based safety programs that help improve the actions and behaviors of individuals.

Each of these topics—along with many others not listed above—can be thought of as contributing toward the overall discipline of operational integrity, as illustrated in Figure 1.1.

Figure 1.1 Operational integrity management programs.

In addition to the incorporation of a wide range of management techniques that are shown in Figure 1.1, operational integrity can be applied to a much wider variety of industries than is the case with process safety management. Operational Integrity Management (OIM) can be used not only in chemical facilities and refineries, but also in transportation, pipelines, and offshore oil and gas.

Many companies are also developing operational excellence programs. The manner in which these can relate to operational integrity is shown in Figure 1.2. Operational integrity is made up of technical initiatives; operational excellence incorporates nontechnical management systems that can affect safety and operability. These include distribution, inventory management, outsourcing, supply chain management, and procurement.

Figure 1.2 Operational integrity to operational excellence.

Technical, Process, and Occupational Safety

The word “safety” has many different interpretations and is used in many different contexts. For those managing risk in the process industries, it is useful to distinguish between three types of safety: technical safety, process safety, and occupational safety. There is considerable overlap between them, but the broad characteristics of each are as follows:

• Technical safety is mostly to do with quantitative analysis and often involves very high-consequence events. The calculation of blast overpressures, the dispersion of gas clouds, and the design of fire ring mains would all fall into this category. Technical safety would also include quantitative risk analysis and decisions to do with levels of acceptable risk. Formal safety assessments, as generally applied to offshore work, are mostly to do with technical safety.

• Process safety incorporates elements of technical safety, but its focus tends to be on operations and the role of people on facilities that are already in operation. Process safety is also concerned with process-oriented issues such as runaway chemical reactions, corrosion, and the inadvertent mixing of hazardous chemicals. The impact of such events can lead to major incidents such as explosions, large fires, and the release of toxic gases.

• Occupational safety, sometimes referred to as “hard-hat” safety, covers topics such as vessel entry, vehicle movement, protective clothing, and tripping hazards.

Historical Development

Safety and risk management programs have always been an integral part of the process industries. Initially such programs were quite crude and basic, but they have become much more sophisticated as standards have risen and as processes have become more complex.

Figure 1.3 provides an overview of some of the major changes and advances that have been made in the last 150 years or so.

Figure 1.3 Developments in safety systems.

1 Safety as a Value

People working in the process industries now take it for granted that safety is a value, even when their own organization has a poor safety record—no one ever says, “Safety doesn’t matter.” However, such an attitude was not the norm 200 years ago. In his novel Hard Times, published in the year 1854, Charles Dickens satirically condemned the industrialists who failed to acknowledge that safety and clean air were values, in and of themselves.

They [the industrialists] were ruined when they were required to send labouring children to school; they were ruined when inspectors were appointed to look into their works; they were ruined, when such inspectors considered it doubtful whether they were quite justified in chopping people up with their machinery; they were utterly undone, when it was hinted that perhaps they need not always make quite so much smoke…

The weapon that Dickens and his fellow authors used was satire. This weapon has now fallen out of use—modern professional safety workers rarely attempt the use of irony (although some of what is written in Chapter 3 in the section to do with Warning Flags represents a feeble attempt to follow in Dickens’ footsteps).

2 Codes and Standards

By the beginning of the twentieth century, the number of industrial accidents had risen to unacceptably high levels. For example, between the years 1870 and 1910, at least 10,000 boi...