Nothing lasts forever: Items missing from your preventative maintenance system

Abstract

AbstractDue to the number of serious Process Safety incidents that have occurred from the implementation of the Process Safety Management Standard, US Occupational Safety and Health Administration has implemented National Emphasis Programs to audit process safety compliance at refineries and chemical processing plants. Both the Refinery and the Chemical National Emphasis programs identified Mechanical Integrity as the element with the largest number of compliance gaps. An overview of the techniques used to identify the scope of an Asset Integrity System will be provided. Learning from incidents, including outside the Chemical Processing Industry, that have occurred will be reviewed to illustrate the importance of smaller, often overlooked, items that became root causes of incidents. The goal of this paper is to provide the reader with guidance on identification, determination of inspection frequency, documentation and deficiency resolution of critical equipment that not only satisfies the regulatory requirements but also includes all items, including small, often overlooked items.