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The Site Procedures and Work Processes for Achieving Excellence in Pressure Equipment Integrity and Reliability

By John Reynolds, Principal Consultant at Intertek. This article appears in the November/December 2011 issue of Inspectioneering Journal.
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This article is part 8 of a 10-part series.
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 Part 4 Part 5
Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10

 

Introduction

In the first article in this series entitled How to Put It All Together – Guide to Organizing a Successful PEI Program, I provided an overview of the necessary Management Systems (MS) for a successful program to achieve excellence in pressure equipment integrity and reliability (PEI&R). This is eighth article in the series. Clearly, Site Procedures and Work Processes (SP&WP) have a major role in achieving excellence in PEI&R. It’s where the “rubber meets the road”, without which few of the other PEI&R management systems can be really effective. The SP&WP MS is where everything is pulled together to document who does what, when, where, and how in order to achieve excellence in all ten of the PEI&R management systems outlined in this series of articles. It’s basically the “sustainability” piece of the entire series of PEI&R MS. If the SP&WP MS for PEI&R is complete and thorough, then all the important work processes and procedures will transcend any one individual (in case he/she suddenly leaves the company) and let’s everyone else at the site know what the specifics are of their role in PEI&R. With an effective SP&WP MS for PEI&R, all the good work to maintain PEI&R will continue 24/7 in order to avoid process safety incidents due to mechanical integrity break downs. For some people, it’s the most boring part of the PEI&R MS. For me, it’s the most important part. If you don’t do this part really well; you’re not likely to do the rest of it (the other nine PEI&R MS) very well either. Finally in this article, I will show how the SP&WP MS for PEI needs to be integrated with the nine other important PEI&R management systems covered in the series.

For purposes of review (or for those who did not see or perhaps not remember the original article in the Sept/Oct, 2009 edition of the Inspectioneering Journal (IJ), and in order to set the stage for this follow-on article on SP&WP MS, I will repeat directly below, some of the same introduction included in the first article (1). The second article in the series covered Management Leadership and Support for PEI (4), and appeared in the Jan/Feb, 2010 edition of the IJ. The third article in the series covered Management of Change and Integrity Operating Windows for PEI (5), and appeared in the Mar/Apl, 2010 edition of the IJ. The fourth article in the series covered The Role of Corrosion Control in Achieving Excellence in Pressure Equipment Integrity and Reliability(6) and appeared in the May/June, 2010 edition of the IJ. The fifth article in the series covered The Role of Risk Assessment and Inspection Planning in Pressure Equipment Integrity and Reliability (7) appeared in the Sept/Oct, 2010 edition of the IJ. The sixth article in the series covered The Role of Life Cycle Management in Achieving Pressure Equipment Integrity and Reliability (8) and appeared in the Jan/Feb, 2011 edition of the IJ. And just previous to this article, The Role of PEI Codes and Standards in Achieving Excellence in Pressure Equipment Integrity and Reliability (9) appeared in the May/June, 2011 edition of the IJ. For those who would rather not review the introductory material, you can skip directly to the third section of this article which is labeled Site Procedures and Work Processes.

Knowing what all needs to be accomplished in order to achieve excellence in PEI&R is one thing, but knowing how to organize it all for success is quite another. I have previously written/published numerous articles about what all needs to be accomplished (1-3). In this series of articles I will show how to organize all 10 of the PEI&R Management Systems (MSs) to achieve overall success i.e. in order to make sure that everything that needs to be accomplished, is accomplished using PEI&R management systems (MS) and work process (WP) descriptions. Without an effective organizational strategy for PEI&R, many of the 101 essential elements of PEI&R(2) can “drop between the chairs” because there may be no management system in place to make sure that each element gets properly planned, scheduled and completed at appropriate intervals by a responsible party. However with an effective PEI&R MS in place, each site should be able to maintain pressure equipment integrity (i.e. no breaches of containment) and to achieve pressure equipment reliability (i.e. having pressure equipment available to function as designed to meet the business plan), both of which comprise PEI&R excellence.

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