Insights
Notes from the field
Practical notes on process safety — standards, methods, and lessons from the field. Mostly the things I find myself explaining more than once, written down.
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The incident is the cheap part
An investigation only pays off when its findings actually change something on the plant, a setpoint, a procedure, a safeguard, and get followed through. A report that's written, filed and forgotten is pure cost, and the same thing happens again.
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The safety margin is not spare capacity
A plant runs well below the pressure where its trips and relief valves act. The space in between is a safety margin, and using it up to get more output is the same as making the plant less safe.
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What a LOPA revalidation should re-check
A five-year revalidation isn't about re-typing the old study. The real work is checking the assumptions underneath it, because those are the things that quietly go out of date.
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Alarm rationalization is a subtraction problem
In an upset an operator doesn't need more information, they need less of it and in the right order. Most of rationalization is really deciding which alarms to take away.
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Relief sizing is a scenario problem before it is a valve problem
Most arguments about a relief valve aren't really about its size. They're about which emergencies are credible, and that's a conversation to have before anyone opens the sizing software.