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PROCESS SAFETY

Simon Gakhar presents a safety consultants view of how to raise the priority of investing in safety with those who control your companys purse strings

Justifying the price of safety


W
E all know that accidents cost money. And major accidents can cost a lot of money as pertinently summed up by the famous clich: If you think safety is expensive, try having an accident . Major accidents incur costs for a number of reasons, most of which, with hindsight, are obvious. They include loss of personnel, assets and production, increased insurance premiums, environmental cleanup, fines, and bad publicity. Because of this we tend to justify spending money on process safety based purely on how much an incident would cost if it happened, and hence what we save by that incident not happening. Techniques such as cost benefit analysis (CBA) address this and can be useful when applied correctly and realistically, but the downside is that they can result in a surprisingly low level of expenditure being justified to avert a major incident. Its always harder to justify expenditure when the immediate benefit (such as return on investment) cant be demonstrated. Even if theres a legislative driver such as ATEX, dependent upon the culture in the company, process safety expenditure is often treated no differently. In our business we carry out many safety assessments for clients and invariably the outcome is a series of risk reduction recommendations which we expect the client to implement to ensure compliance. This helps the client understand what they need to do but to be faced with a large number of actions (some of which may incur substantial costs) often leads to one outcome: no action or, at best, insufficient action. Often, we revisit a site, sometimes years after the first assessment, to find only a small percentage of actions have been addressed, usually the cheap and easy ones. This problem can be even more pronounced if the recommendations are made from an employee within the company rather than an external consultant. This is simply because consultants are sometimes engaged to help drive safety improvement projects forward where internal efforts have failed. So what can we do to change this? There are no simple answers to persuading a company to part with capital for process safety improvements, but there are tactics that can be employed to increase the likelihood of take-up.

Often, we revisit a site, sometimes years after the first assessment, to find only a small percentage of actions have been addressed, usually the cheap and easy ones.
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www.tcetoday.com february 2012

CAREERS PROCESS SAFETY

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If you think is expensive, try having an

safety

accident

prioritise
A client once asked me: Tell me the ten things I need to do avoid blowing up my plant tomorrow. Sometimes its narrowed down even further to say, two or three key actions. Picking out the really important actions, usually on the basis of risk, accompanied by a suggested implementation timescale, gives a clear message that only essential expenditure is being proposed. This is nothing new by any means but is often overlooked or the prioritisation is not carried out carefully enough, resulting in every recommendation being assigned a high priority to be completed in six months. This results in a lack of credibility for the prioritisation methodology and often results in lack of action. Senior management want to see the effect of the recommended action on the magnitude of the risk reduction. Even if prioritisation is done well, in these tight economic times they sometimes still cant envisage why such measures are necessary. This leads us to the second option.

demonstrate
In creative writing, using show not tell as

a writing style is a well known technique for success, and the same is true for process safety. Theres still a poor perception of the potential consequences of major incidents such as explosions or runaway chemical reactions. However, in my experience, recommendations to clients who have had experience of major incidents first hand (maybe with a previous employer) are far more likely to be implemented. So I show people what can happen ideally, Id love to take people to some of the incident sites we visit, as the reality is far worse than you see on the news or read in incident reports. Of course, you cant show explosions on the plant, but we have used small-scale demonstrations in our training courses for many years and these have a tremendous effect on peoples attitudes. Our delegates continue to be amazed at the explosive energy of just 1 g of combustible powder. More recently, we have developed smallscale demonstrations for gas explosions, flash fires, pressure and vacuum hazards and chemical reaction hazards. Some of the IChemE Flash Bang demonstrations (which can be found on IChemEs YouTube channel) are examples of some which can be used,

the whoosh bottle being one we now use frequently. Demonstrations do not need to be limited to training courses and can be used to prompt action where there may be hesitation to spend money. One client questioned the need for improved explosion protection as he couldnt believe dust was all that dangerous. Showing pictures of explosion-damaged equipment from similar industries or even destroyed factories didnt seem to sink in. However, exploding a few grammes of dust taken from the companys own process showed how violent its material could be. The end result was that the client immediately (and I mean immediately) placed the order for the very much-needed upgrade. Another company was struggling to understand why certain risk reduction measures were needed to avoid the explosion risk in a cabinet where there was a risk of small amounts of alcohol being released. After all, the largest amount which could be released was only 500 ml, smaller than a bottle of whisky. Using the whoosh bottle demonstration, I showed what could happen if, for example, there was no ventilation and only about 40 ml was released.
february 2012 www.tcetoday.com 31

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Option 1 2

PROCESS SAFETY

Description Designate Zone 22 for 1 m around flexible connections and upgrade all equipment accordingly Provide secondary seal around the flexible connections (and eliminate the zone)

Estimated cost (US$) 35,000 9,800

Table 1: Comparison of risk reduction options

Showing videos like those available from the Chemical Safety Board (CSB) is also a good way to stimulate action. But its surprising how many people working in the chemical industry still believe that it couldnt happen here . If I show a video of an incident in one industry sector you often get responses like, Thats all very interesting but we dont use sugar here . So in order to stimulate action to address a specific issue, try to find examples of incidents which involved the same or closely-related materials handled, which happened in the same industry sector and with the same or similar equipment. In other words, try to be as specific as possible with what you show. For example, discussing Buncefield with a bakery, even if to illustrate a common safety management failing, will not be as effective as using the Imperial Sugar incident. Also, if possible use a recent incident, as this will highlight the fact that even with more up-to-date technology and tighter legislation, accidents still happen.

show cost savings


As already mentioned, its much easier to justify expenditure on any project if the return on that investment can be demonstrated up front. So always look for an overlap between a safety improvement and an immediately visible return on the investment.
Powder trapped between primary and secondary seal

Figure 1: Secondary seal around a flexible connection 32

An example is when trying to justify measures to reduce the risk of ignition from mechanical equipment, eg for ATEX compliance. Many of the measures which can improve safety such as condition monitoring or improved/increased planned maintenance will also improve equipment reliability. You may not have a history of explosions caused by failed bearings on pumps but you would be quite unique not to have a history of breakdowns for the same reason. Therefore it should be possible to work out the potential cost savings of reduced breakdowns based on factors such as increased plant downtime, less peripheral damage, or reduced manpower. Also look for simpler, lower-cost alternatives to improve safety. The lower the cost and the easier and quicker to install, the more likely it will get sanctioned. This might not get you the ideal safety solution you originally wanted but it will get you something which reduces the risk, which is the ultimate objective. This sounds like common sense but its surprisingly often not practised. A recent example of this is a client who asked our opinion on the need to install explosion isolation on a new dust collection system using a reverse jet filter. They needed to justify the expenditure and wanted help to determine if propagation was sufficiently likely with the proposed layout and materials. This isnt an easy one to answer as there is experimental evidence that explosions can propagate back along extraction ductwork, but the exact circumstances for when it will not happen are not as well understood as we would like. When we looked more closely at the process, we realised that very little dust was created at source, with the majority of material being very coarse and incapable of dust explosion. So we questioned the need for a reverse jet filter which would have concentrated the dust and created a potential dust explosion hazard. A better and much cheaper solution was to put in a small cyclone or cartridge type filter to collect the material. There would be an extremely low likelihood of a flammable dust cloud internally, meaning that no explosion protection or expensive isolation would be required, along with less maintenance. We also find that companies dont like spending money on upgrading equipment in hazardous (zoned) areas. But they will often accept large hazardous areas as it often leads

to improved flexibility in their operations. Of course you cant have it both ways large hazardous areas and reluctance to invest in managing those hazardous areas effectively. Given the choice of the two options in Table 1, which do you think would be most likely to be implemented? Our client naturally implemented Option 2 (see Figure 1). This was a very good choice as it not only improved safety, but actually achieved other cost savings and operational benefits such as: it minimised the potential for the flammable atmosphere rather thanrelying on controlling the ignition source; a lower level of skill is required to maintain a rubber seal as opposed to Ex equipment; it resulted in fewer restrictions in the area as it is no longer classified as hazardous; there was less plant downtime; it led to a cleaner and more hygienic work environment; and it reduced product loss.

conclusions
Getting authorisation to spend money on process safety improvements can be difficult even in a good economic climate. Despite ever increasing legislation we find that implementation of risk reduction programmes still has to compete, often unfavourably, with other necessary expenditure. One key issue is that the immediate benefit of reducing risk cannot be easily measured in terms of return on investment. This article has presented some ideas on possible ways to increase the likelihood of getting higher priority for process safety expenditure. Remember: prioritise focus on the really important risk reduction measures; demonstrate very specifically what could happen without the suggested improvements; show that the safety improvement can generate an immediate and measurable return on investment; and look for simpler, lower-cost solutions for risk reduction there is often an alternative available. tce Simon Gakhar (sgakhar@chilworthglobal. com) is technical manager, process safety consultingat Chilworth Technology.

www.tcetoday.com february 2012

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