MJCronin
You hit the nail right on the head. Startup, Shutdown and Maintenance are the most dangerous times in any plant. UOP LLC and I am sure many others have dedicated manpower to help companies startup and shutdown. Their experience can be very valuable. As far as contractors suffering, I think that it boils down to experience. The operators are less experienced at startup and shutdown, most of the time the plant is running when they arrive and when they leave. Inexperienced people turn the wrong valves or not enough valves and Boom!
However I don't think that accepting the fact that the plants blow up some times is OK. It takes constant training and more engineers than most companies employ to keep the plants running safely.
Stonecold, It's the acceptance of the fact that forces or drives better and safer, design, operations, and maintenance; or at least should. Such is the reason for HazOp. As for contract personnel, a few years back, contractors were in charge of Operations/Maintenance during a trun around in a polyplant in Deer Park Tx. that went up. Once again ..., these things blow up and you gotta know what you're doing and why.
Based on the preliminary reports this one and the Deer Park one sound quite similar, gas cloud. I don't know if they would call it a "Blev" or not.
The use of pick up labor in all industries has become the norm instead of the exception.
My old employer just had plant wide unscheduled outage and brought in a lot of very unskilled labor. One of the supervisors had been tell me how much they saved in labor of the normal cost of a routine overhaul, great except they are going to have to overhaul 2 of 15 units again, either of which will wipe out all the labor savings. The best one is that one of the crews took 124, 1 1/8" x 12" Inconel 718 studs and cut them to 9" on a brick saw. They replaced them with B7 studs and nuts in 1300?F @ 250 psig service. I don't know what the total bill will be for getting 718 studs on a breakdown rush.
How bad is the maintenance getting? I was just asked if it would be possible to hot bolt this flange. There is no restraint on the piping attched and if the flange goes the whole thing will be gone, in orbit. This flange contains a double naked 3/4" spiralwound gasket set in a rabbit. Every time the phone rings I want to hide. The calling has slowed down as my initial recommendation was to shut the thing down. They did have a spare set of studs but used them in money saving program.
I think Saxon's answer is a bit more precise than Stone's. The trend has been to put the contractors IN CHARGE of the turnaround rather than just providing labor. I think this is a result of liability issues in case a contract worker is injured - the liability is placed on the company rep giving the orders to the contractor that resulted in the injury. The poor guy who was hurt or killed can't sue the company because of workman's compensation laws, thus everybody's ass is covered.
I don't think there is anything fundamentally wrong with contract personnel - they have always been used for manintenance activities - but the lack of direct operating company supervision that is the root cause of the problem.
jay165 hit the point, supervision, we, in Brazil, are still at the beginnig of have contractors in charge of operations, but we're very used to contract other for maintenace jobs, such activity is under a work law that state that the plant owner has the liability for deaths and injuries ocurring to contractor's employee if he fails in provide him any assistence.
Most, perhpas all accidents are preventable. Regarding routine industrial safety, most who work in the maintenance area understand the hazards related to confined space entry, stored energy lockouts, fall protection, lifting operation hazards, etc. Few construction workers appreciate the hazards associated with unit operation. Most know that during maintenance lines must be inert before anyone applies a torch. However there are many plant hazards where engineers and operators may assume that everyone involved is aware. Instead of this lax view, provide extensive training to every worker involved in the maintenance activity.
Coordination with the plant operators is among the startup problems with contractors performing a startup. The plant management team and contractor both want to be in-charge. The problems that come to my mind pertain to multiple contractors working within a major facility. The operations management permit others to continue work related to interface lines. Open a valve that permits air to enter the HC line and you created the bomb.
One entity must be in charge of every activity and use well planned procedures.
I think that this is an extremely interesting and informative thread....
The comments by jay165 and jsummerfield tell the most about the state of safety today in the process industry....
My opinion is, that almost all process maintenance accidents are as a result of management organizational failures and a shunning of responsibility. The fact is that the voluntary comments above support this picture of "contractors in charge".
Of course, having a central "Shutdown Czar" with responsibilities of co-ordination between contractors is the most rational and safe way to conduct work.....The responsibilities of this role imply legal liabilities and possible culpabilties for the person assigned. Nobody wants this job.
I feel that OSHA and other state/federal organizations would better serve the public if maintenance activities were given additional scrutiny and possibly be forced to develop a detailed safety plan sometime prior to the activities......
Anyone else out there have strong feelings about this ??
OSHA, 29 CFR 1910.119, aka Process Safety Management of Highly Hazardous Chemicals attempts to address this issue. I used to joke about the routine refinery furnace fire. OSHA requires the operator to eliminate releases and explosions, etc.
The Owner or operating company will always be held responsible in the US. Often companies require the contractor to provide a lump sum project that includes engineering, procurement and construction -- with commissioning and startup responsibilities. Management with each entity may attempt to push the scope onto other and avoid the costs associated with doing buisiness in industry.
We do not live in a perfect world. Each of us must do our part to make these facilities safe.
Company employees are just as apt to take shortcuts as contractors. We recently had a company mechanic severely burned because he took a shortcut around the established, published, hammered-into-your-brain, do-it-or-you-get-fired energy control (lockout-tagout) procedure. He spent two weeks in the Sherman Oaks burn unit.
I guarantee you the investigation of this accident will show that the root cause was that somebody took a shortcut or unwittingly missed one step of an energy control procedure.
Contractors are not a lower life form and I don't think anyone here is suggesting that. They do not take any more shortcuts than anybody else. The data from the behavior-based safety programs that folks are implementing these days plainly shows that. The reason contractors' employees are more often the casualties in process plant accidents is because they are the ones physically doing the work and are the ones in the nearest proximity to the hazard, the "line of fire", as we say in the business.
The process operator stands back after signing off on the hot work permit and after placing his lock on the group tag. He's not the one doing the welding or entering the vessel, simple as that. - Pete
