PROCESS SAFETY
Continued listening and understanding the challenges faced by Owners and Operators led AXIOM to review its offerings, and a strategic decision was taken to deliver Process Safety and Process Safety Engineering Services. Whilst many other firms in the sector offer such services, AXIOM’s capability to integrate Process Safety with its existing complementary disciplines stood to offer a unique value proposition to its clients.
The importance of effective Process Safety is well understood, with incidents such as those at Buncefield, Bhopal and Sevesco in mind. However, the ability to effectively identify and mitigate these key plant risks, whilst also offering wider strategic advice that maximises return on assets, has been enabled through AXIOM’s integrated offering.
AXIOM now delivers Process Safety Engineering and Process Safety Consultancy Services to improve safety and performance to operators and owners across a range of industries including energy, chemical pharmaceutical, oil&gas, bulk storage and distribution and food.
Collaborating with clients to identify common issues and concerns enabled AXIOM to craft client-focused, value-adding solutions The work undertaken has ensured our business is best-placed to manage through-life risks on plant assets and installations, taking full account of the expertise of Process and Operations specialists.
Process Hazard Assessments are systematic techniques used for hazard identification and risk assessment.
Services include:
- Inherent SHE Assessment
- Hazard Identification (HAZID)
- Hazard & Operability Study (HAZOP)
- Layers of Protection Analysis (LOPA)
- Pre-commissioning & Commissioning safety review
- Process Hazard Review
- Verification and revalidation of hazard studies
- Retrospective Process Hazard Assessment
- Process Hazard Assessment Action management and close out
Consequence Analysis is a vital component of Process Safety Engineering that helps to predict the outcomes of hazardous events on an industrial plant e.g chemical manufacturing, storage facility or an establishment that handles hazardous materials.
It provides useful insight to the behaviour of materials when released to the atmosphere at various operating conditions and surrounding environment.
AXIOM can draw resource from our team of competent Process Safety Engineers to provide technical support specific to your plant including;
- Identification of flammable, explosive and toxic materials
- Identify credible accidental release scenarios
- Consider potential for domino effects
- Dispersion studies for flammable or toxic materials
- Effect of thermal radiation due to fires (pool fire, jet fire, fireball and flash fire)
- Effects of blast overpressure (e.g. unconfined vapour cloud explosion, confined explosion, detonation)
- Flare and vent stack sizing calculations and study
- Cryogenic spill assessment
- Safety engineering design including AFP, PFP requirement
- Support risk assessment studies e.g. QRA and OBRA
- Support the predictive aspects of COMAH safety report
Occupied buildings situated on major hazard sites must be designed to withstand all foreseeable events including fires, explosions, and toxic releases.
Services:
AXIOM can provide competent people with the expertise and experience specific to your industry to lead and facilitate:
- Initial assessment to identify occupied buildings
- Occupied building risk assessment (OBRA) report
- Support during new building design including determining the most appropriate location
- Update or verification of existing OBRA reports
- Develop risk reduction measures and ALARP demonstrations for existing occupied buildings
Pressure relief systems are a critical layer of protection. To achieve this, pressure relief needs to be considered at each stage of the asset life cycle.
CONCEPT
- Relief Philosophy
- Identification of Pressure Systems Requirements
- Relief Scenario Identification
- Relief Device Selection & Materials of Construction Advice
- Tender Specifications & Bid Evaluation.
DESIGN
- Determination of Relief Rates, stream design and calculations
- Specification and Datasheet Development
- Pipe Stress Analysis (Static and Dynamic)
- Relief Stream Design Verification DVC.
- Discharge and Disposal Systems, Flare and Vent System Modelling and Design.
- DIERS Methodology for Two-Phase Flow Relief.
- Third Party Design Verification.
OPERATION
- Relief Stream Auditing.
- Prioritisation and Criticality.
- Assurance for Existing Assets.
- Risk Ranking of Gaps.
- Update Documentation.
- Prepare Recommendations for Improvement.
- Assurance for Proposed Modifications.
- Installation and In-Service Inspection.
- Legislation Support.
- Asset Condition Audits
Functional safety forms part of a plant or equipment’s safety related systems and should be managed through the lifecycle of a plant/process from concept to decommissioning. The aim is to reduce the risk to the end user.
Services:
- Hazard and risk assessment – Chairing, scribing and/or participating in a PHA (e.g. HAZID, HAZOP, FMEA studies)
- Allocation of risk reduction measure – Chairing, scribing and/or participating in LOPA Studies
- Specification of the required safety integrity function – Develop the process safety aspects of a Safety Requirements Specification (SRS)
- Functional Safety Assessments to assess if the SIS achieves the required safety integrity function (SIF) and safety integrity level (SIL) through the lifecycle.
- SIL Verification – Achieved SIL calculations
- Design solutions
- Development of Functional Safety Management systems
- Audit of Functional Safety Management systems
- Operations training – Hazard and SIF function
High hazard industries handling dangerous substances must conduct DSEAR assessments and take appropriate technical and organisational measures to prevent or control explosive atmospheres that can jeopardise the safety of individuals and the workplace.
Services:
- Hazardous Area Classification (HAC): Identifying hazardous substances, ventilation calculation, consequence modelling using DNV Phast and preparing HAC drawings plan and section view drawings.
- DSEAR Assessment: Preparing a basic and detailed DSEAR assessment report including performing gap analysis to ensure compliance with DSEAR regulations and industry standards.
- Ignition Risk Assessment: Conducting electrical and mechanical equipment ignition risk assessment, site survey to identify ATEX-rating of equipment, performing retrospect ignition assessment for equipment installed before July 2006.
- Dust Hazard Assessment (DHA): Supporting HAC, mechanical equipment ignition risk assessment and DSEAR assessment.
- Other Services:
– Specification and selection of ATEX certified equipment for use in hazardous zone
– Recommendation of suitable location for additional equipment on site
– Support for equipment and component labelling and hazardous areas safety signage
– Review of existing equipment on site to ensure compliance to ATEX regulations
– Organising laboratory testing of explosive dust or flyings to determine dust properties
– Support the development of safety management systems and emergency response plans to deal with fire and explosions risks
Fire hazard is a major concern in manufacturing when large quantities of flammable materials are handled.
Operators of COMAH facilities are required by law to carry out appropriate risk assessments of their work processes and to take appropriate measures to control and/or mitigate the identified risks.
- People – are they adequately protected from harm, suitable fire fighting capabilities, trained and competent people, emergency response capability
- Processes – Systems and procedures in place to test, operate and maintain fire safety equipment. Permitting systems and isolations standards are suitable and sufficient.
- Plant – adequately designed to RGP and meets industrial codes and standards. Considers secondary and tertiary containment, fire and gas detection and protection systems, layout, hazardous area classification and emergency shutdown systems.
Operators are required to demonstrate how they manage human failure in order to reduce the risk of major incidents.
Services:
- COMAH Critical Task Identification and Prioritisation
- Human Reliability Assessment & Safety Critical Task Analysis
- Support Writing of Safety Critical Procedures
- Develop Safety Critical Communication processes.
- Identifying COMAH Critical Roles
- COMAH Safety Report Review and Update
- Support Competency Management
- Management of Organisational Change
- Training – Human Factors Awareness & Management of Human Factors
Companies have a duty to take all measures necessary to prevent major accidents and limit their consequence to people and the environment.
The COMAH Regulations requires owners of top-tier establishments to submit a safety report to demonstrate that they have taken all measures necessary to prevent major accidents from occurring and to limit the consequences to people and the environment should they occur. The UK HSE assesses company COMAH safety reports using their Safety Report Assessment Manual (SRAM) which provides technical criteria for all elements of the report.
Services:
- COMAH awareness training
- Planning (Hazardous substance) consent applications
- COMAH Safety Report development, review, and update
- COMAH notifications
- Consequence modelling
- Technical audits and gap analysis of COMAH strategic topics
- Competent Authority (CA) intervention support
- Major Accident Hazard (MAH) identification using Process Hazard Analysis (PHA) techniques.
A versatile and experienced Process Engineering team available to customers from graduate level through to Principal engineer, using industry standard tools and techniques.
Our structured systematic approach to process development and design brings rewards in terms of cost effective solutions and optimum business benefits.
Services:
- Process Engineering Feasibility Studies
- Process Engineering Concept design
- Process plant operational improvement and support
- Process Safety Engineering
- Process Modelling
- P and ID updates and Management
Pressure relief systems on major hazard sites must be capable, throughout their life, of relieving pressure when process variables deviate from planned conditions.
In high hazard process industries, pressure relief systems are commonly relied upon as a vital line of defence against overpressure or under pressure scenarios. The failure of a pressure relief system may have serious consequences to humans, surrounding equipment and structures, or the environment. Such an incident can lead to fires, explosions or toxic substance release to atmosphere. Pressure relief valves and bursting discs are typically sized using industry recognised standards, based on potential relief scenarios identified during the design phase. The sizing and selection of the relief system requires detailed knowledge of the operating conditions and the specific duty that the device is expected to be exposed to.
Services:
AXIOM can help your company identify if the Pressure Relief Systems on your site are still capable of keeping the plant safe.
- We can perform a health check of your system.
This will comprise a review of existing relief stream
installations available information and documentation
for these streams. - AXIOM will risk rank this list of relief streams to
develop a road map for completion of calculations
and documentation according to an agreed set of
standards. - We will also review a sample of existing relief stream
documentation to be provided by your company and
advise areas for improvement.
Piping & Instrumentation Diagrams are vital to a site’s understanding of its assets. They offer a common language of which engineers, operators and maintenance staff alike can talk.
Services:
- Producing full site as-built P&IDs, including AutoCAD deliverables
- Checking and updating existing P&IDs
- Updating P&IDs for Management of Change including line-walking to verify changes
- Preparing P&IDs for hazard studies
- 3D site scans
- Asset registers such as line lists, equipment lists, instrument lists, and valve registers
Supporting the Asset Life Cycle
