Page 95 - Serious Incident Prevention How to Achieve and Sustain Accident-Free Operations in Your Plant or Company

CH07pp068-82 4/10/02 12:50 PM Page 73

Understanding the Risks 73

With news of the Bhopal tragedy, I was among the safety directors and
plant managers throughout the chemical industry contacted by the news
media for interviews. The pressing question was, “Can it happen at any of
your facilities?” In retrospect, our response indicating that our facilities
could not impact the public to the same magnitude as the Bhopal incident
was totally correct. It’s fair, however, to say our assessment was based on
general knowledge of on-site operations rather than the results of scientific
evaluations. In the months after the Bhopal catastrophe, in-depth evalua-
tions of the potential for our operations to impact areas outside plant bound-
aries provided an enhanced understanding of facility risks. This improved
understanding led to identification of numerous improvement initiatives—
actions resulting in inherently safer facilities. The period of discovery and
action following Bhopal was truly an industry-wide phenomenon, and the
work done to better understand the risks was a key to the implementation of
actions to more effectively control the risks.
The commitment and resources required for understanding major risks
involved in operating complex operations, such as a large chemical facility,
are obviously much greater than for understanding the risks of operating a
small boat. Complex operations, such as aviation, health care, large-scale
construction, manufacturing, utility operations, refineries, pipelines, trans-
portation operations, and chemical facilities, require a systematic approach
to identify and understand risks.
A petrochemical facility, for example, is typically comprised of thou-
sands of components, all of which must function reliably, both separately
and as a system. Failure scenarios with potentially serious consequences
may be relatively numerous, and each must be understood in some detail.
Consider, for example, a single component in a typical facility—a pump. It
is not sufficient to simply understand that a pump failure can result in a re-
lease of material. Identification of the work necessary to control pump-re-
lated risks requires a full understanding of the specific failures that can
occur. For example, the following conditions that can lead to pump failure
must be understood and controlled:

Gradual changes leading to failure due to corrosion, erosion, or other
wear and tear.
Changes in operating conditions that may contribute to increased
corrosion or erosion.
Improper installation or repair leading to failure of pump compo-
nents.
Misoperation, such as opening valves in the wrong sequence during
startup.