“Among our articles of lazy hardware, I recommend the faucet that stops dripping when no one is listening to it.” — Marcel Duchamp Piping systems need drain and vent valves. For start-up, shutdown, maintenance, and other reasons. A piping system without appropriate drain and vent valves won’t work properly and is an exposure hazard for [...]
“Beware of little expenses. A small leak will sink a great ship.” — Benjamin Franklin The most common hazard we encounter during a HazOp is a leaking pipe. Not the most severe and not the highest risk. Just the most common. But we always encounter it. Why? Because pipes leak. All pipes, whether or not [...]
“Shallow men believe in luck; wise and strong men in the cause and effect." – Ralph Waldo Emerson In process safety, one important aspect of assessing risk is determining what safeguards are in place to protect against a hazard. Often, we see teams credit human response as a safeguard, sometimes relying on the response as [...]
“Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle.“ -Martin Luther King, Jr. Many events and activities in life require planning, like saving up for a vacation or setting aside time to catch up with friends and colleagues. Industrial processes are no different. Blueprints, technical manuals, and procedures lay [...]
“For having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged, by better information or fuller consideration, to change opinions, even on important subjects, which I once thought right but found to be otherwise.” — Benjamin Franklin The first time you ever encountered a weasel word was probably when your mom said, “Maybe,” or [...]
“They’ve thought of everything. Everything, that is, but their own failure.” — K. Austin Collins I recently watched the 1964 movie, Fail Safe, directed by Sidney Lumet. It reminded me of a dangerous misconception I frequently encounter during process hazard reviews. If you are not familiar with the movie, it came out shortly after the [...]
“A camel is a horse designed by a committee.” — Alec Issigonis Good process design results in a process that is more likely to work. Great process design results in a process that is even less likely to not work. Great process design is not the result of compromise and trade-offs, but of a singular [...]
“At the end of this day, one shall stand, one shall fall.” — Optimus Prime, Transformers: The Movie I have never been to a process plant that could continue running without electrical power. So, it is not uncommon to see a plant with two separate electrical feeds, each with their own transformers. On most days, [...]
“With a purposeful grimace and a terrible sound, he pulls the spitting high tension wires down.” — Buck Dharma, Blue Öyster Cult The preferred design of a safety function is one that deenergizes to trip. That is, a function that goes to the safe state when all sources of energy have been removed. The probability [...]
“I don’t worry about the bullet with my name on it. Can’t do anything about that. It’s the bullet addressed to ‘Occupant’ that I worry about.” — Drew Schmidt I don’t get as much junk mail as I used to. Now, I get junk emails and junk texts. When I do get junk mail, however, [...]
