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A listing in reverse chronological order of articles by:
“This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue pill – the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill – you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes.”
– Morpheus to Neo in the movie The Matrix.
You read that headline right: everything does suck! And in this article, I’m going to give you the solid reasons why this makes me both optimistic and excited about our future!
Think to yourself: On any given day, how many times do you hear someone grumbling about their phone not working well, traffic patterns on their way to work driving them insane, how a business of any kind inconvenienced them by having poor customer service, or a government institution – commonly one like the DMV – putting them in a sour mood?
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A few weeks ago, I had written a post comparing threshold exposure values for SO2 and H2S. After that post, Lee Pharis, one of the blog readers, forwarded me an email describing the new EPA standard for SO2 exposure.
EPA has set the one-hour SO2 health standard at 75 parts per billion (ppb), a level intended to protect against short-term exposures ranging from five minutes to 24 hours.
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This article is the fifth of fourteen parts to our risk management series. The series will be taking a look at the risk management guidelines under the ISO 31000 Standard to help you better understand them and how they relate to your own risk management activities. In doing so, we’ll be walking through the core aspects of the Standard and giving you practical guidance on how to implement it.
In previous articles (1st, 2nd, 3rd, & 4th) we’ve looked at the core elements of the risk management framework generally, as well as the role of leadership and commitment, integration and design more specifically. In this article, we’ll be looking at how to effectively implement the risk management framework into your organisation.
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Chemical processes and designs are increasingly being evaluated for inherent safety – i.e. reduce the hazard rather than the risk. The philosophy behind inherent safety is ‘What You Don’t Have, Can’t Leak’ and so you take necessary steps to reduce the hazard.
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A risk is an event or activity that can go wrong and cause an impact to the project. Risks can have a negative or positive impact to the project. Risks that have a positive impact are called opportunities. If they have a negative impact, they are called risks. A goal on a project is to try and balance risks and opportunities to mitigate the chance of cost or schedule growth.
There are two basic categories of project risk. They are the known and unknown. The known risks are the four project constraints (scope, cost, schedule, quality). Poor execution of these constraints is a major reason why projects fail. This paper addresses how to manage known risks.
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OSHA Process Safety Management (PSM) program is nearly two decades old and I believe that the 14 PSM elements provide a good basic framework for facilities to create a safety program.
What OSHA PSM lacks is quality metric.
Let me explain further.
[Read more…]This article is the fourth of fourteen parts to our risk management series. The series will be taking a look at the risk management guidelines under the ISO 31000 Standard to help you better understand them and how they relate to your own risk management activities. In doing so, we’ll be walking through the core aspects of the Standard and giving you practical guidance on how to implement it.
In previous articles (1st, 2nd, & 3rd) we’ve looked at the core elements of the risk management framework generally, as well as the role of leadership and commitment, and integration more specifically. In this article, we’ll be looking at how to effectively design your risk management framework.
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Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A) are a part of today’s corporate growth strategy. As a part of M&A due diligence various critical business issues are evaluated. But what about safety performance of the company you are looking to acquire or merge with?
You will say that most M&A in oil and gas/chemical processing industries are asset-driven. You look at what the pots and pans can do for you in the future and base your M&A decision.
[Read more…]This article is the third of fourteen parts to our risk management series. The series will be taking a look at the risk management guidelines under the ISO 31000 Standard to help you better understand them and how they relate to your own risk management activities. In doing so we’ll be walking through the core aspects of the Standard and giving you practical guidance on how to implement it.
In our previous articles (1st, 2nd) we introduced you to the core elements of the risk management framework. This included integration, design, implementation, evaluation, improvement, and the role of leadership and commitment.
In this article, we’ll be looking at integrating and adapting the risk management framework to your organisation. In particular, we’ll be focusing on how you can best understand your organization’s structures and context, appreciate the role of governance and strategy, appreciate risk management accountability, and the importance of being iterative and dynamic with your approach to integration.
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Natural gas pipelines have caused incidents leading to fatalities, injuries, and property damages.
To be precise, there have been an average of 50 serious gas pipeline incidents every year in the U.S. between 1990-2009 (Source: http://primis.phmsa.dot.gov/comm/reports/safety/SerPSI.html?nocache=4823) resulting in more than 300 fatalities. Majority of the reported gas incidents have occurred on the gas distribution lines – i.e. gas pipeline systems that are found in thousands of communities from coast to coast and distribute natural gas to our homes and businesses.
This article is the second of fourteen parts to our risk management series. The series will be taking a look at the risk management guidelines under the ISO 31000 Standard to help you better understand them and how they relate to your own risk management activities. In doing so we’ll be walking through the core aspects of the Standard and giving you practical guidance on how to implement it.
In this particular article, we’ll be highlighting the role and importance of leadership and commitment to supporting robust risk management practices. We’ll also be looking at the benefits of such support together with some practical tips for doing so.
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Risk is a perception.
Our perception of risks is mainly affected by two factors:
(a) whether we are voluntarily accepting the risk.
A good example is a refinery worker considers the risks at workplace lower than his cousin who has only read about chemical plants; and
(b) potential consequences of event or act or decision.
[Read more…]Reliability is designed into a product. Poor reliability is long term, difficult and expensive to rectify because it is woven into the fabric of the product. That is why high reliability products require complete and accurate analyses, simulations, and models to be successful. High reliable components are essential as well. Single point failures are taboo but, in some cases, there is no way to avoid them.
This paper presents two examples of how to design single point failures for high reliability.
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LNG spilled onto water sometime undergoes a rapid phase transition (RPT) or physical explosion creating localized overpressures.
Such physical explosions are also observed when water contacts molten metal or hot lava (steam explosions)
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