ASSET INTEGRITY MANAGEMENT Through Past learning from incidents

We define Asset Integrity as "Ability of an asset to perform its assigned/Designed duties/functions effectively and efficiently without compromising with Health, Safety & Environmental protection."

The means of ensuring that the people, systems, processes and resources that deliver integrity are in place, in use and will perform when required over the whole lifecycle of the asset is called Asset Integrity Management .

Asset Integrity Management is the continuous assessment process applied throughout Idealization, Conceptualization, FEED & Detail design, construction, installation and operations to assure that the facilities are and remain to be fit for purpose.

Every Organization shall establish IOWs ( Integrity Operating windows) which were classified into different levels, distinguished by risk, in order to set priorities on notifications (including; alarms, alerts, and/or other notifications) and timing of actions to be implemented when IOW’s are exceeded.

As a global practice there were three primary levels of IOW’s: “critical”, “standard”, and “informational” based on the predicted change in damage rate to equipment during an exceedance and the ability of the operator to take corrective action.

A critical IOW level is defined as one at which the operator must urgently return the process to a safe condition and, if exceeded, could result in one of the following in a fairly short timeframe:

— larger and/or quicker loss of containment

— a catastrophic release of hydrocarbons or other hazardous fluids

— emergency or rapid non-orderly shutdown

— significant environmental risk

— excessive financial risk, or

— other unacceptable risk.

A standard IOW level is one that if exceeded over a specified period of time, requires predetermined operator intervention or some other corrective action by a SME in order to bring the process back within the IOW limits in order to avoid one or more of the following to occur:

— eventual loss of containment,

— a release of hydrocarbons or hazardous fluids,

— unscheduled or non-orderly shutdown,

— a negative impact to the long term unit performance and its ability to meet turnaround run length, or

— unacceptable financial risk.

A third level of IOW’s may be established that are Informational Limits in which t parameters that have defined IOW’s are controllable, especially for Critical and Standard Limits, but some are not and may not have an immediate designated operator intervention assigned. Deviations from these could eventually lead to accelerated corrosion or other damage over a longer period of time. These parameters which may not be controlled by operators still may need to be reported to, reviewed by, and trended by designated technical personnel (SME’s). These Informational parameters driven by systems like Condition Monitoring systems which may provide secondary or circumstantial indication of active corrosion/ erosion. When exceedances of these informational parameters are reported, the appropriate SME’s in turn may then specify that some type of engineering, process, or inspection activities be planned or adjusted in order to control the rate of deterioration and prevent unacceptable equipment deterioration over the longer term. These informational IOW’s do not normally have alarms or alerts associated with exceedances. In most cases, the limits for informational parameters would be established to provide a point where the operator (or implemented software) would initiate a notification to the appropriate SME that some informational parameter has exceeded a limit. Informational IOW’s would typically be associated with the following situations: — would not be directly related to a potential loss of containment within the near term,

— provides for an secondary indication of operational performance or corrosion control issue, and/or

— used to track parameters that are not necessarily controllable by operators.

The HSE CASES Study shall identify all major accident hazards and puts measures in place to reduce the risks associated with these major accident hazards to “as low as reasonably practicable” or ALARP.

The Design and Construction shall have in place suitable arrangements for periodic assessment of integrity, Prevention of Fire and Explosion, and Emergency Response Plans & Procedures that have identified the major accident hazards and an assessment be carried out for the evaluation of the likelihood and consequences of such events. For Pipelines it is required that the operator of a pipeline ensures that adequate arrangements have been made for dealing with discovery of a defect in or damage to the pipeline and the HSE CASE identification requires the operator to identify the safety critical elements (SCE) on the facility and draw up a verification scheme for these safety critical elements Performance Evaluation.

Safety critical elements means such parts of an installation and such parts of its plant

1.The failure of which could cause or contribute substantially to a major accident.

2. A purpose of which is to prevent, or limit the effect of, a major accident The safety critical elements must remain in a good state of repair and in good condition. All hydrocarbon containment equipment (pipelines and risers etc.) and structures are safety critical elements. The verification Programs are complementary to, but not a substitute for, routine maintenance programs and an integrity management system. The output from the inspections and other activities carried out as part of the integrity management process can be used to satisfy many of the requirements of the verification scheme. The integrity management system is therefore an integral part of the HSE management system and as such, an important plank in the argument that major accident hazards have been identified, are being properly managed and that the attendant risks are, and will remain, as low as is reasonably practicable.

TATA VENKATA SURYA PRAKASH