Overview of Safety Engineering in Industries

In recent years, Hazard Identification, Risk Assessment and Risk Control have become a major to the practice of planning, management and the operation of a business as a basic of risk management.

Safety engineering is an engineering discipline which encourages that engineered systems provide acceptable levels of safety. Therefore, Safety Engineers are involved in the design and fulfillment of systems for the protection of human health and safety of the environment.

Risk and hazard are two different but closely related things. Hazard is anything that can cause harm while risk is the chances that any hazard will actually cause injury to somebody. Risk is the product of likelihood and consequence. For example, walking down the street can be a hazard. The risk of personal danger may be high. A lorry or car that passes by is a hazard. If the frequency of the vehicles passing by increased, then the risk is high.

Managing the risk involves a quantitative assessment of the consequences of all major hazards that have the potential to cause harm. Consequence analysis provides quantitative information on the risk and the potential hazard. There are various types of scenarios to be considered in conducting the consequence analysis.

DESCRIPTION

The Bhopal disaster in India (1984) that has exposed MIC gas to over 500,000 people, best exemplifies that toxic release may cause fatalities. Evidently the first event to consider is toxic release. One of the solutions is to use constitutionally safer design technique to minimize the accidents rather than to control the hazard. This technique is best implemented in preliminary design stage where the consequence of toxic release can be evaluated.

The immediately dangerous to life or health (IDLH) is defined as exposure to airborne contaminants that is likely to cause death or immediate adverse health effects. The toxic propagation will be analyzed and this information is highly beneficial to quantify the risk and justify the position of safety equipment systems.

Next event to consider is the vapor cloud fire or vapor cloud explosion. Explosions are a complicated physical phenomenon which science continues to investigate.

Years by years, researchers have come up with model of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) in improving the accuracy and understanding the analysis. This model has become very useful to solve the problems by allowing an allowable level of characterization with less geometric and complexity, placing on the key parameters that have influence on the consequences.

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Lastly, an event called pool fire. Pool fire is one of the most frequent accidents for process industry. Pool fires often cause explosions in which results in more fires and causing huge losses of soul and equity. Since both the risk and the number of occurrences of pool fires are high, same as before, it is necessary to model the risks associated with pool fires so as to accurately predict the behavior of such fires with the help of CFD.

KEY BENEFITS

? Rigorous approach ensure all hazards are assessed and managed according to defined procedure

? Lower employee absence and turnover rates;

? Fewer accidents

? Peace of mind for owners and operators that your design, fabrication and operation had been reviewed in accordance with years of experience from the world’s leading safety experts

SYNERGY’S EXPERIENCE

Synergy's experience encompasses various safety engineering methodologies and studies. We have conducted over 500 safety engineering works include HAZOP (Hazard & Operability Studies), HAZID (Hazard Identification Studies), QRA (Quantitative Risk Assessment), Bow tie analysis, HSE Design and Safety Case, Escape, Evacuation and Rescue Assessment (EERA), Emergency Survivability System Assessment (ESSA), Temporary Refuge Impairment Analysis (TRIA), Dropped Object Analysis, Fire & Explosion Risk Assessment (FERA) for clients around the region.