A Case Study on Ensuring "ALARP" Demonstration to Justify Continued Operation with Respect to "Mah" By Integrating Process Safety Techniques for Existing Process Facility

A lot have been written on process safety. However, practical applications of all these theories & studies has its own challenges. At the end, after overcoming the challenges as well as developing, implementing & monitoring strategies, a risk to existing facilities can be reduced to ALARP/ acceptable level.

This paper will throw light & discuss about requirements to integrate different process safety strategies, challenges during implementation & their solutions to demonstrate that existing oil & gas facility is safe for operation, through a practical case study of one complete process train. The methodology includes;

• Identifications of process trains
• Data collection
• Data Review
• Review past changes & their implementation
• Update records & P&IDs
• Carry out/ Update Integrated PHA with process simulation
• Development of Failure Scenario
• Risk Calculation considering existing safeguard (preventive and mitigating measures)
• Risk submission and ALARP demonstration
• Compare risk
• Identification of safety critical elements (SCEs) & Safety Critical Tasks (SCTs)
• Development of Performance Standard of SCEs
• Developing management system of PLAN-DO-CHECK-ACT
• Integrating the same in Audit/Inspection
• Develop training through simulations

Challenges faced by team for existing facility to achieve optimum process safety & ensure ALARP level of risk, and their solutions will be discussed.

Conclusion

This exercise provides evidence that wherever practical, the design and operations of the existing oil & gas facility has attained a level of risk that Justifies Continued Operation with respect to major fire and explosion events. This demonstration of Justification for Continued Operation is based on the number of safety measures inbuilt at design stage, Quantitative Risk Assessment and various other process safety studies revalidated during operational phase of the oil & gas process facility as well as after implementing changes through MoC. It must be noted that a separate process of action tracking is in place to prioritize and monitor implementation of recommendations provided to reduce the risk further to As Low As Reasonably Practicable (ALARP). A systematic approach of Plan-Do-Check-Act is developed to ensure that, safety critical tasks are carried out in timely manner by competent personnel, to ensure safety critical elements are in place and functional in line with performance standard.