Safety Engineering
Design safety focusses on reducing health, safety and environmental risks through risk assessment and adherence to recognised codes, standards and good practice guidance.
The HSE states that good practice is the generic term for standards for controlling risk, which have been judged and recognised by the HSE as satisfying the law, when applied to a relevant case in an appropriate manner. Sources of written, recognised good practice include Approved Codes of Practice (ACOPs) and HSE Guidance but other sources may come from government departments, standards organisations and trade bodies.
Where hazards are low, often the risk assessment has been carried out by others and compiled into good practice guidance. Implementation and compliance with good practice guidance in most cases will reduce the risk to levels that are deemed ALARP.
However, for major accident hazards where large numbers of people can be harmed or significant damage to the environment can occur in a single event, compliance with relevant good practice alone may not be enough to comply with the law. In such cases where the circumstances are not fully within the scope of the good practice, additional measures may be required to reduce the risks to ALARP. These measures may relate to plant and process design, methods of operation, maintenance, etc.
SLR’s multi-disciplined team of consultants and consulting engineers can undertake design reviews to document the basis of safety and justifications for the protection measures in place. This includes:
- Inherent safety reviews of processes and processing equipment
- Chemical reaction hazards and basis of safety
- Environmental design basis, including BAT
- Control and shutdown philosophies
- Relief system studies
- Functional safety management
- Hazardous area classification
- Inspection and maintenance of static process equipment and secondary containment systems
- Specification, inspection and testing of hazardous area equipment
- Preparation of process safety documentation to support ongoing maintenance and modification
Reviews may be required for existing facilities, to support process design, or in exercising technical due diligence prior to an acquisition.
Whether your need is for a specific project or additional ongoing on-site support to deal with a succession of operational, design or project issues, we can help. We can place our engineers within your own team, supporting them as necessary using specialists based in our own offices to provide you with a readily accessible pool of process safety professionals.