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European downstream oil industry safety performance

15 May 2017

Concawe, the European pipeline health, safety and environmental monitoring organisation, published a statistical summary of reported incidents in 2016 covering the period 1993-2015. The information was provided by 38 Concawe Member Companies, together accounting for 97.1% of the available refining capacity in the EU-28, Norway and Switzerland. ...
Integrating culture and leadership into process incident prevention

12 May 2017

The implementation of process safety management (PSM) has received significant attention in the last 25 years, but despite this attention, major catastrophic incidents continue to occur, with organisational cultures often taking the blame. This pattern tells us that process safety must make the same migration as personal safety – that systems are only as effective as the culture in which they operate, says R. Scott Stricoff of DEKRA Insight....
Paving the way to safer, more cost-efficient nuclear reactors

27 April 2017

In 2014, The Independent newspaper reported on an impending “nuclear crisis” in the UK. Unlike many other fears commonly associated with that expression, this was a crisis of age and the possible extinction for the country’s aging nuclear fleet. At the time, all but one of Britain’s reactors was predicted to close in 15 years....
Risk and hazard reduction at Sellafield 2015/16

25 April 2017

The Sellafield Annual Review of Safety 2015/16 highlights progress in cleaning up the site, the largest repository of nuclear waste in Europe. Major steps, outlined below, include significant advances in dealing with the contents of the site’s storage ponds, containing some of the most highly radioactive waste on the site. ...
New threats to ICS/SCADA systems and practical protection

20 April 2017

The cyber world has changed dramatically over the past 12 months. Cyber attacks on ICS/SCADA networks and breakthrough research discoveries have made investment in top level cybersecurity an absolute priority for companies, argues Phil Neray of CyberX, while Tim Ricketts of M.A.C. Solutions provides advice on improving the security of ICS networks. ...

What effect will Brexit have on standards and compliance for hazardous area industries? 11 April 2017

Tim Marks represents the AEMT as a member of BSI, IEC, and IECEx standards committees for Explosive Atmospheres and Rotating Electrical Equipment. Here, he looks at some of the issues facing the Hazardous Area industry now that the UK Parliament has agreed to Brexit....

Earthquake protection for electrical infrastructure 30 March 2017

In areas known to be prone to earthquakes, buildings and technical infrastructure need to be earthquake-resistant. This also applies to electrical equipment within those buildings. In this article, Hartmut Paul of Rittal looks at the concept of earthquake-resistance in relation to electrical infrastructure and describes his company’s approach to designing and testing earthquake-resistant equipment and systems....

Understanding functional safety and related standards 21 March 2017

How well do you understand the term functional safety? Could you describe why there are international standards that specifically deal with functional safety, which parts of these standards apply to engineering or management activities and what measures are required to ensure compliance? Here, Peter Stabler of BPE answers these questions and gives an overview of functional safety and related standards....

Making the choice – Which Safety Control Standard? 15 March 2017

In this article, Stewart Robinson of TÜV SÜD Product Service looks at the two different standards for safety related controls, EN 62061 and EN ISO 13849-1 and advises on which should be applied in a particular application....

Non-negotiable: the importance of reliability in valve actuation 13 March 2017

For the optimal control of many processes, it is crucial that a valve reaches a certain position. For safety critical applications, the actuation of the valve (the ability of the system to move the valve to a safe condition in response to demand), is of fundamental importance. In this article, Richard Harvey of IMI Precision Engineering assesses the qualities and conditions required to achieve optimal operation, including unit design and operating forces....