Your Reliability Engineering Professional Development Site
A listing in reverse chronological order of articles by:
Communicating risks to public from chemical or nuclear facilities is a major challenge. We notice this over and over again with EPA community-right-to-know, nuclear power plants and lately with the LNG facilities.
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The wellsite is 200 miles offshore, and based on experience with the application, your team is confident about reliability. But will the downhole tool survive the journey to setting depth?
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For some, the post-coronavirus “new normal” is a frightening concept that rattles their status quo, while others are taking this moment to seize new opportunities afforded to us by a global disruption, as COVID-19 has proven to be. The fact of the matter is that aforementioned opportunity is available to all of us, whether our “new normal” is unbearably difficult or extremely simple.
You may be asking yourself: How is that possible?
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We appear to be in a global recession – companies all over are struggling to deal with impact of economic slowdown. In an attempt to maintain profits, companies are drastically reducing their spending and also trimming down their workforce. It is anticipated that one-fourth of the employers in the US will undergo workforce reduction in 2009. As a result of pessimism and uncertainty about future, there is an increased level of anxiety amongst the employees. There are a few issues that a chemical manufacturing firm must address to ensure safe operation during the downturn:
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Dr. Davison has more than 30 years’ experience in environmental management, integrated water cycle management and risk assessment. Davison has more than 30 years’ experience in environmental management, integrated water cycle management and risk assessment. She is the Principal Risk Analyst and founding Director of Risk Edge® Pty Ltd. and co-founder and R&D Manager, D2K Information Pty Ltd. She received her PhD in Environmental Biochemistry and Microbiology from Macquarie University. Her most recent book is entitled: The Application of ISO 31000 to Drinking Water Quality Risk Management: A Practical Approach. It is published by Edge Pty Ltd, Sydney Australia.
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The 20th century was a time of great technological change that forever transformed how we live and work – changes that necessitated the birth and development of the field of Process Safety Management. The early years saw the evolution of mechanization into assembly lines and true industrialization. Lack of access to South American nitrate during World War I, led to the creation of the synthetic chemical industry. World War II fostered increased industrial growth and sophistication. By the 1960s, we were building computers and beginning our race to the moon. Industries grew becoming increasingly sophisticated and reliant on automated systems. The 1970s brought the creation of the US EPA and OSHA. The 1980s witnessed one of the greatest tragedies in the last century – an estimated 4,000 people died in the 1984 Bhopal accident. Since then, the process safety community has evolved in its approaches and methodologies to better manage risks.
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Do you need design margin in your product? A composite frac plug may need margin as a mitigation against uncertainty in material properties. Long service life products used in offshore wells are sometimes designed with structural margin as a mitigation against changing downhole conditions. But can margin be used for other parameters?
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What does the future hold for project management? Remote and flexible work arrangements were trends prior to COVID-19. The pandemic greatly accelerated the trends and a lot of it will be permanent well after the virus is tamed. Remote work arrangement means any work you do that dose not require commuting into an office. A flexible work arrangement are alternate arrangements or schedules from the traditional working day and week. Employees may choose a different work schedule to meet personal or family needs
This paper discusses the risks these changes will have on project management for future work. It does not present new technologies and the risks they will impose on projects. This is a subject for another paper.
[Read more…]I recently came across a report from European Gas Pipeline Incident Data Group (EGIG) titled “Safety Performance Determines The Acceptability of Cross Country Gas Transmission Systems”. The paper presents incident data contributed by six European gas transmission operators over a 30-year period of 1970-2001.
[Read more…]This piece will examine how the move away from quality management to risk management in United Kingdom local governments developed and how risk management became a mandate. It will then move to the specific by looking at Cheltenham Borough Council’s risk management policy and aspects of the 2018 Audit Committee Annual Risk Management Report. It will close with some observation on where risk and quality management are being used together.
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Biofuel production and manufacturing facilities in the United States are increasing rapidly. On August 8, 2005, President Bush signed the Energy Policy Act of 2005 (H.R. 6) into law. The comprehensive energy legislation includes a nationwide renewable fuels standard (RFS) that will double the use of ethanol and biodiesel by 2012.
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Your team is developing a new downhole chemical injection valve for a client’s offshore well. The valve’s service life target reflects its electro-mechanical (EM) content and is much shorter than the well’s economic life. But the valve housing has an estimated structural service life that exceeds well economic life, so structural integrity will exist well beyond electro-mechanical failure. Will the shorter life of the electro-mechanical content satisfy client requirements?
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James Toney has more than thirty years of experience in the quality profession. His clients have included the U.S. Department of Labor, IRS, Federal Aviation Administration, U.S. Navy, Housing and Urban Development, Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and Health and Human Services. Commercial clients included financial, telecommunications, hospitality, educational, and healthcare organizations.
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LNG import terminals in the U.S. follow NFPA-59A and 49CFR193 standards for facility siting. As a part of the siting studies, LNG regasification facilities report thermal radiation exclusion zones and flammable vapor exclusion zones:
You wait 15 minutes for people to turn up, call-in, or get on-line. Some may have popped down to Starbucks to get their daily fix of skinny hazelnut caramel latte, or green tea or Evian water. The punctual few chit-chat away about anything and everything except the meeting agenda in case they commit some anticipatory faux pas. Then there are those, particularly the decision makers, who let everybody know that they only have a certain amount of time available; they will need to leave promptly so they won’t be late for their next meeting and with all plausible deniability may avoid decisions and conclusions; but wasn’t that the point of the meeting?
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