DATA Collection: A Key to Accurate and Efficient Relief System Design or Revalidation Study

“Complete and accurate written information concerning process chemicals, process technology, and process equipment is essential to an effective process safety management program and to a process hazard analysis” per OSHA 1910.119 CFR. In order to meet the API guidelines and OSHA requirements companies need to carry out process safety revalidation which includes study of their relief system design. Data collection for these revalidation studies is considered to be non-technical aspect by most of the companies and is handed out to resources who don’t technically understand the importance of type of data they need to collect, where to look for the data, right sources of data, data hierarchy that need to be followed and avoiding data dumping to the revalidation team. Such practices can negatively affect the performance of revalidation study, higher costs for the study, concern lists requiring further data mining or mitigation and may result in unnecessary operational or process changes.

The intent of this paper is to provide data collection basics, and to provide the operating companies with information needed to make the right choice of their data collection team. The emphasis is on a discussion of the information needed for the relief system design or revalidation and how they affect schedule and cost.