Safety Studies

Process Safety (IRH)

A safety conscious company can also be a profitable company, by meeting your Safety, Health and Environmental requirements not only ensures avoidance of improvement notices/ prosecution/bad publicity it can also have a major positive impact on your bottom line.

This impact can be achieved by better control of your work processes and/or the installation of protective methods and systems that avoid events that may lead to harm to people / environment (and income). Such events can be costly in time and money; wasteful of your valuable resources and influencing your operating costs. In the extreme, the event may lead to prosecution, adverse publicity and loss of customers.

The Management of Safety at Work Regulations requires Hazard Identification and Risk Estimation to People and/or the Environment. This then entails Risk Reduction, if the estimate of risk is greater than Company's targets, by defining means to reduce the risks with appropriate risk reduction values.

The new Dangerous Substances and Explosive Atmosphere Regulations (DSEAR), which became UK law in December 2002, further endorse this requirement.

DSEAR and other related UK regulations are intended to improve the safe operation within the workplace, for people and/or the environment. However in practice it has been shown that by following the requirements of these UK regulations an improvement of your bottom line figure is possible.

DSEAR applies to all dangerous substances at nearly every business in the UK. It sets minimum requirements for the protection of workers from fire and explosion risks related to dangerous substances and potentially explosive atmospheres.

If one of the methods for ensuring safety to people and/or the environment is a Safety Instrumented System (SIS) then BS EN 61508 provides a bench mark of best practice for the Life Cycle management of SIS to ensure the required Safety Integrity Level (SIL) is achieved from birth to death of the Equipment Under Control (EUC)..

BS EN 61508 - Functional safety of electrical/electronic/programmable electronic safety-related systems, includes for more than the design of a Safety Instrumented System (SIS). It is a life cycle concept concerned with the operated unit from inception to decommissioning.

The standard includes for, assessment of risk to people and the environment, determination of acceptable risk and the methods to achieve and maintain this level of acceptable risk.

In addition, the operator needs to have an Operating, Maintenance and Design Change Control policy in place as part of the life cycle maintenance of the designed and installed SIS Safety Integrity Level (SIL). The establishment by the EUC operator of appropriate SIS Standards, Documentation, Proof Testing, Maintenance, Audits and a formal procedure for Design Change Control, are required to achieve this objective.

The use of the standard's requirements for the protection of your assets can also help to ensure high equipment 'on-stream' time at an optimum 'life time' cost.

BS EN 61508 is a generic standard on which sector specific safety standards are to be based. The document is a European Norm; however it is not a directive or part of UK legislation. [The author has been made aware from different sources that the HSE are using the standard as a 'bench mark' of best practice.]

For the process sector IEC 61511 is available and may supersede S84 the USA equivalent.

• Process Safety Studies
  • Needed for COMAH
  • Basis of Safety needed for DSEAR
• Safety Reviews
• Management of Functional Safety
• Links to the other safety pages (Combustible dusts, Zoning, DSEAR etc)

Rowan House Ltd have extensive experience in providing accident, near-miss and incident investigation studies. Customers for this type of work have included loss adjustors as well as end users seeking to learn lessons from the incident cause. Our incident investigation study reports have been used by the HSE to promote better safety awareness in developing industries and have been used in consultations between the HSE and equipment suppliers as well as end user and industry representatives.

Rowan House Limited has substantial experience of a variety of incidents within various sectors of the process industry including:

• Investigations of Fires, Explosions and Accidents
• Equipment Damage
• Relief System Activation
• Equipment and Plant Maloperation
• Investigation of unsatisfactory plant performance

Normally such investigations cover not only the causes of the incident but what steps require to be taken to ensure that a recurrence is avoided. Rowan House Limited are also experienced at providing Legal Expert Witness evidence.