Safety Practice for Refinery and Petrochemical Plants - During the Major T&I (Turnaround & Inspection)

Safety Practice for Refinery and Petrochemical in the Major T&I

Rabigh Refinery and Petrochemical Company (Petro Rabigh), is an integrated Refinery and Petrochemical complex processing 400,000 barrels of crude oil per day and 1.2 million tons of ethane per year, through its various plants. In 2011 Petro Rabigh had a major Turnaround and Inspection (T&I), where a vast number of contract personnel worked. In fact, accidents and serious injuries can happen if there were no planning and coordination among the management, as the T&I involves simultaneous tasks by different contractors, day and night, working within aggressive time frame.

This paper provides an overview of the best safety practices that were implemented during Petro Rabigh 2011 T&I. It explains the Safety Program developed and implemented by Safety Department to execute the T&I safely.

Planning was a key element of the T&I preparation. A dedicated taskforce was established for the T&I planning with representatives from Manufacturing, Maintenance, Engineering, Safety, and other involved departments. The taskforce addressed various safety programs including; Work Permit System, Critical Lift Plan, Confined Space Entry, PHAs…etc. Moreover, critical jobs were identified and Job Safety Analysis (JSA), Management of Change, Mechamical completion Certificate and Pre Startup Safety Review (PSSR) were conducted for each of these jobs. Special lectures and presentations were given to both Petro Rabigh and Contractor Employees on the lessons learned from worldwide T&I incidents experience.

Based on the work scope and schedule, the peak contractor manpower in Petro Rabigh Complex during the T&I reached approximately 14,000 in addition to 2500 Petro Rabigh employees. It was essential that all contractor organizations were made aware of the minimum contractor safety requirements of Petro Rabigh. These include; Contractor Safety Program, Hazard Identification Plan and Contractor Safety Orientation Training Program.

Petro Rabigh recognized that continuous field safety monitoring and interaction with field personnel is essential to execute the T&I Safely. Accordingly, Petro Rabigh Safety staff conducted 24 hours inspection and field monitoring tours. During these tours safety staff went around the contractor work areas observing activities, identifying unsafe actions, initiating talks with the contractors and supervisors, and producing daily observation reports. Data from the safety observations was consolidated and daily T&I dashboard was published and shared with all T&I concerned departments highlighting top risks categories to focus the efforts on. Several safety flyers were developed and released to educate contractors on the safety practices and lessons learned from the accidents happened during the T&I. In addition to Petro Rabigh safety staff, contractor safety Inspectors were hired to support safety staff during the T&I. Those inspectors were given extensive coaching by Petro Rabigh CSFD.

Finally, the turnaround logged about 7 million man-hours, spread over seven weeks. With proper planning, preparation and perfect execution, Petro-Rabigh was able to exhibit an enviable safety record, viz., two lost-time contractor injury incidents, three medical treatment cases and five first-aid injury incident. Huge contractor workforce and the massive scale of activities were managed safely with the above innovative implementation – the practice Petro-Rabigh would like to continue in 2015 T&I with 25,000 beside 4,200 Petro Rabigh employees in addition to about 11,000 Phase II contractors working in parallel with T&I activities.

Author’s responsibility: Ayman Abdullah Natto (GSP), Petro Rabigh Process Safety Engineer