Loss of Services – have you got a plan?

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In this world with freak weather and service interruptions becoming more frequent it is more important than ever to know what the plan is.

This winter there have been multiple issues which have led to water supply losses, power cuts and flooding.

Those facilities that are high hazard and covered under the COMAH regulations ned to consider in advance the effects of service loss and these should be covered in all businesses with their regular hazard studies to ensure that you minimise harm as low as reasonably practicable.

As a hazard study leader, I hear all too often that all of our systems ‘fail-safe’. I often upset people when I ask what does that mean? We need to define what the safe state is but what about:

If we rely on forced ventilation to prevent flammable atmosphere build-up are these backed up for loss of power and if they are how long for?
If we have critical cooling, what about powering the cooling pumps which are usually high powered
OR the amount of available water, in your tanks, in the event of loss of supply from the water company
Will your boiler tubes still be covered when all of the heat is recovered from your boiler to prevent dry tubes exploding due to heat failure of the boiler tubes.

Another aspect that I recall having to develop was how do we isolate the services remotely from the plant in the event of an emergency on the plant where you cannot access the plant to isolate.

One of our documents in the briefcase of doom was an emergency isolations document, where we could isolate power, air, water, feed pipelines from away from the plant so it could be made safe for emergency actions such as firefighting.

I’m not sure how much of this is considered within the design of new facilities and whether with fewer larger complexes these considerations are detailed in any formal registers so that emergency scenarios can be adequately controlled to prevent escalation of what will already be stressful situations and prevent additional harm to personnel whist dealing with the ‘bad day’.

Maybe a chance to ask the questions of your operational leaders as to how good are the plans for your facility.