Guidelines for Integrating Process Safety into Engineering Projects

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• Publisher: Wiley-AIChE
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781118795231
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Physical Sciences
• Subtopic: Industrial & Technical Chemistry

There is much industry guidance on implementing engineering projects and a similar amount of guidance on Process Safety Management (PSM). However, there is a gap in transferring the key deliverables from the engineering group to the operations group, where PSM is implemented. This book provides the engineering and process safety deliverables for each project phase along with the impacts to the project budget, timeline and the safety and operability of the delivered equipment.

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INTRODUCTION

This chapter introduces the integration of process safety activities throughout the life cycle of an engineering project. The discipline of process safety has evolved to prevent fires, explosions, and accidental releases of hazardous materials from chemical process facilities. This involves effective management systems comprising practices, procedures, and responsible human performance and behaviors to ensure proper equipment design and installation, and to maintain the integrity of the facility during operations.

Projects are a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service, or result. In the case of engineering projects in the process industry, the result is usually a new or modified facility. Engineering projects can vary widely in scope and size, so these guidelines present the broad objectives and considerations for process safety that are appropriate at different stages of the life cycle.

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Project Life Cycle

The series of phases that a project passes through from its initiation to its closure.

(from PMBOK Glossary (PMI, 2013)

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In oil and gas, and chemical companies in the process industry, the term “stages” is also used in reference to the phases of a project.

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Facility

A portion of or a complete plant, unit, site, complex or any combination thereof. A facility may be fixed or mobile.

(from AIChE/CCPS Glossary)

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The temporary nature of a project means that its closure corresponds to a point in time when its objectives (i.e. commissioning of a new or modified facility) have been achieved or when the project is terminated because the objectives will not be met. Most projects are undertaken to create a lasting product or result, in this case a facility.

After the project has ended, the facility will continue to operate for a number of years until it is retired, disposed, or dismantled/demolished. During this time the facility will likely be subject to startup/shutdown, periodic inspection, maintenance, and turnarounds. Therefore the facility has its own life cycle, which may partially overlap with the project life cycle. For example, the project may not be closed until the new facility has met production and/or product quality targets, or later the facility may be debottlenecked to increase production or modified, which will involve another project.

The main focus of these guidelines is on proactively implementing process safety activities at the optimum timeframe, but also addresses reactively conducting “cold eyes” reviews to provide assurance that nothing significant has been missed. This approach ensures that, if the right process safety activities are conducted at the right time, project leadership will have the right (process safety) information in order to be able to make the right risk management decisions regarding safety.

The intent of this book is not to describe in detail how to perform specific process safety activities, but rather to identify what needs to be addressed at each stage of a project. Other CCPS publications, together with industry codes, standards and recommended practices, describe methods for specific process safety activities and are referenced throughout the book. For example, the design and management of functional safety is covered in great detail in: Guidelines for Safe Automation of Chemical Processes, 2^nd edition (CCPS 2017b), and Functional Safety - Safety instrumented systems for the process industry sector - Part 1: Framework, definitions, system, hardware and application programming requirements, IEC 61511-1 (IEC 2016), which are both referenced in multiple chapters of this book.

Process safety in engineering projects involves leadership, managers, engineers, operating and maintenance personnel, contractors, vendors, suppliers and support staff. Therefore, these guidelines were prepared for a wide audience and range of potential users. The chapter concludes by introducing the structure of this document.

1.1 BACKGROUND AND SCOPE

Process safety management systems have been widely credited for reductions in major accident risk within the onshore process industries, such as oil refineries and chemical plants, and some offshore regions like the North Sea. Most companies have had practices for various process safety elements, such as operating procedures and emergency response, for many years, although the scope and quality of these practices was sometimes inconsistent until specific process safety regulations were promulgated.

Some international process safety regulations, such as the Seveso Directive and its various national implementations in Europe (Seveso 1982), and the Offshore Installation (Safety Case) regulations (HM Government 1992), set goal-setting or performance-based requirements for major project facility design and operation. In the United States, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) introduced the Process Safety Management (PSM) standard (OSHA 1992). This was followed by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Risk Management Program (RMP) rule (U.S. EPA 1996). However, the focus of these relatively prescriptive U.S. regulations was primarily on operations rather than engineering projects, although they did address some basic practices for small Management of Change (MOC) projects.

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Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Acronyms and Abbreviations
• Glossary
• Acknowledgements
• Files on the Web
• Preface
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Project Management Concepts and Principles
• 3 Front End Loading 1
• 4 Front End Loading 2
• 5 Front End Loading 3
• 6 Detailed Design Stage
• 7 Construction
• 8 Quality Management
• 9 Commissioning and Startup
• 10 Operation
• 11 End of Life
• 12 Documentation
• Appendix A. Typical Process Safety Studies Over Project Life Cycle
• Appendix B. Project Process Safety Plan
• Appendix C. Typical Hazard & Risk Register
• Appendix D. Safety Checklist for Process Plants
• Appendix E. Example of Site-Specific Decommissioning Checklist / Questionnaire
• Appendix F. Typical Project Documentation
• Appendix G. Stage Gate Review Protocol for Process Safety
• References
• Index
• End User License Agreement