A turnaround at a chemical plant or refinery presents safety and emergency response professionals with an incredibly challenging environment. No matter the size of the turnaround, plants are welcoming a host of new risk factors that don't exist during normal operations, such as:
- A dramatic increase in the number of workers: as many as 3,000 additional contractors.
- An increase in vehicle traffic: additional risk of collision for vehicles, workers or process/piping.
- An increased risk of exposure to toxic chemicals: removing blinds, opening valves, changing catalyst beds, cleaning tanks, scrubbing towers, etc.
The nonstandard nature of operations during a turnaround, coupled with the influx of additional personnel, heavy equipment and operating procedures, means the risk of monitoring gaps during turnarounds can be disastrous, making real-time asset, emission and weather tracking a must-have. The chemical and refining industry's attitude toward digitization has recently shifted, with more companies understanding and embracing big data and analytics to improve safety and performance. Despite companies spending billions on modernizing their plants and integrating digital technologies, incidents, injuries and unplanned shutdowns are still happening. Could it be the industry is not learning from its past mistakes, or does implementing new technologies to solve problems often introduce additional ones?
Most chemical and refining plants track and store their gas and weather data across several disconnected systems in various formats, running on hardware and software from different vendors. Thus, accessing, aggregating, sharing and using this data for regulatory, training or operational purposes can be tedious. As a result, businesses are left with critical monitoring gaps, as they cannot leverage their data into a single format for decision-making purposes.
A fragmented network of applications and systems poses a unique danger for safety efforts and incident response. Even when plants can overcome the challenge of implementing real-time integrated solutions for gas and weather monitoring, they are faced with a new set of issues when trying to scale their solutions. Recently, this has become a legitimate concern for organizations, as IT and network teams struggle to provide and maintain a growing list of applications and infrastructure demands. The risks and gaps present during regular operations grow exponentially during turnarounds, and chemical plants and refineries desperately need a solution that scales without increasing the resources required to operate it.
The ideal safety monitoring and incident mitigation solution is an integrated real-time safety platform, which offers the best value when it comes to improving safety and reducing risk at a chemical plant, especially during turnarounds. This solution should integrate with digital technologies from various vendors, support different communication standards and integrate with historian databases like PI and OPC, providing access to critical information for cross-functional teams that satisfies the individual team's goals as well as improves the corporate safety culture and initiatives.
For more information about how your plant can operate simpler, smarter and safer, visit www.SAFERsystem.com or call (805) 852-0751.
