Use Your Relief Systems Consultants Wisely

Many facilities in the chemical processing industry have made the decision to contract out the work of revalidating and maintaining their pressure relief systems as they strive to ensure safe, reliable operation of those systems in compliance with the regulatory requirements found in ASME Section I and Section VIII, the Process Safety Management (PSM) requirements of 29 CFR 1910.119, and applicable local codes and standards.  This revalidation work has historically been performed by engineers in-house or picked up by engineering contractors, sometimes as a sub-part of a capital project, and sometimes as a stand-alone relief system revalidation project.  More recently though, there has been a trend to turn over relief system calculations to specialized firms or consultants that have the industry experience and work processes in place to properly evaluate and organize a facility’s relief  systems more quickly, efficiently, and accurately than a general  engineering contractor.

In order to maximize the efficiency of any relief system revalidation efforts it makes sense to limit the overall effort required for the continuous task of keeping a facility’s relief systems current.  One approach to keeping the systems current is to perform one final revalidation project to ensure everything is up-to-date then implementing an “evergreen” solution for maintaining the relief systems.  There are several steps necessary to complete a final revalidation:
1) Gather existing relief system documentation.  
2) Identify any deficiencies in information. 
3) Determine which relief system calculations are accurate and which need to be re-done.  
4) Recalculate systems that need updating. 
5) Store study information in a controlled, well-organized easy to modify location.

Depending on the size and complexity of the facility and its documentation history, the final revalidation tasks may be a significant undertaking.  Once those tasks are complete though, it allows for integration of the relief systems into the facility’s existing PSM framework; specifically into the Management of Change (MOC) processes as specified in 29 CFR 1910.119.  Integrating relief system updates into the MOC structure is an ideal way to ensure these systems remain current; negating any future need for expensive time and resource consuming systematic revalidation.

Once all the relief system data resides in a controlled, easy accessible location, it requires a relatively modest amount of continuous upkeep triggered and controlled through the MOC process.  The benefits of keeping relief systems evergreen are both economic and safety related.  Instead of committing large amounts of resources to periodically review and update relief system information that has changed over a period of years, a much smaller number of resources can be used to continuously ensure these critical safety systems are always up-to-date.  This approach eliminates potentially dangerous gaps in system knowledge between work done in the field and documentation of that work.  It should also reduce overall labor costs associated with keeping the system current by eliminating the large revalidation projects.