Trends in plant inspections and failure analysis

Trinidad and Tobago

Riza Khan, vice-president of In-Corr-Tech, talks to The Energy Year about where the company is finding the greatest demand for its services and recent trends in plant inspections and failure analysis. In-Corr-Tech has been a provider of engineering, inspection and asset integrity management solutions for the energy and construction industries since 1990.

Which sector of the value chain are you receiving the most demand from?
We are mainly servicing the downstream and midstream sectors. That is a direct result of the fact that many assets are quite aged now and there is more pressure than ever for them to maintain or increase production. Equipment upgrades and debottlenecking activities are therefore utilised. We provide our services to the majority of operators in the Point Lisas Industrial Estate, as our specialised suite of services is invaluable to their operations and business continuity.
Our services can be categorised into two types of inspection based on the plant activities: onstream activities and turnaround inspection activities, the latter of which are usually planned around the plants’ scheduled downtime. Our business in the upstream sector has been increasing steadily primarily because of serious mistakes, inspection oversights and haphazard repairs made by others which directly resulted in major process safety incidents, such as leaks or dropped object incidents, which necessitated emergency shutdowns on major upstream installations.

What has been driving the demand for inspection services in the Trinidadian downstream market?
I can think of two drivers: peace of mind for ageing assets and the need for increased plant reliability and safety. Stakeholders and management expect to meet a certain minimum production quota. The plants will always aim to maximise profitability and relying upon a well-planned and properly implemented inspection strategy is one such way to achieve this goal. This can be challenging especially when commodity prices are high and plant rates are pushed above 100%. There are financial incentives to continue production and defer inspections.
Commodity price fluctuations affect the profitability of the company and its ability to forecast and plan for the future. The best plant managers recognise this, budget and plan their inspections accordingly while negotiating objections from owners or corporate management.
The challenge, unfortunately, is that inspections and integrity management have been overshadowed in the past in favour of maintaining production. There is definitely room for improvement in Process Safety Management in this regard.

With respect to plant inspections, what key trends or changes have you observed among downstream companies?
There has been a drive for the last few decades to schedule inspections using a risk-based approach – and there are pros and cons to that. Traditionally, decades ago, inspection approaches were time or condition-based, as it was mandatory or an accepted practice at that time.
Currently, the trend has shifted to a risk-based approach, which would seem to make sense initially. However, much depends on how they are calculating their risks – what data is being input into the software to assess high, medium and low risk? Are all the parameters being properly considered? Without solid and correct inspection data, the entire process can be compromised, resulting in catastrophic or devastating consequences.

Could you give us an example of a major issue that should be addressed using risk-based analysis?
There are many small incidents at plants that lead to sudden failures, which is a major problem that needs to be addressed. We receive news of incidents leading to unit failures and unanticipated plant outages much too frequently.
Fortunately, such incidents rarely result in injuries or death, but it’s a near miss. The issue is not that attention to safety has decreased, but rather that risks affecting plant operations are not being properly managed.
There is a difference in how risk needs to be managed based on the age of the plant. A plant that is less than three years old presents a greater likelihood of initial failures happening. Then, from 3-15 years, there are usually minimal issues, as the operators better understand how to manage the process. However, as the plant ages closer to 20 years and beyond, the likelihood of failures increases drastically. You cannot expect to utilise the same risk management strategy at different stages of the plant’s life, otherwise, the inevitable ‘unexpected’ failures were never truly unexpected, but actually predictable surprises.

How can plant operators be incentivised to take action to improve their risk profile?
Firstly, we need to justify the reliability and improvement initiatives. Plant managers require reassurance on how the initiatives can benefit them in the long term if they make the financial investments involved. Inspections are a negligible cost when you consider the bigger picture – one day of a plant outage can cost a company perhaps as much as a year of routine basic inspections.
The first step is to identify the scope of the opportunities for improvement. We can help them to identify where there is room to improve in certain processes, which may involve doing things a little differently. The second step is to measure their performance and compare what level they are currently at to where they want it to be, in order to justify how there can be a return on their investment. Estimating these values involves benchmarking results of site performance and practices and then we can identify the opportunities associated with that by looking at the gaps.
Finally, plant personnel must understand the need and importance of critical inspections to the bottom line. I still encounter those who consider inspections to be a nuisance, inconvenience, or an obstacle to startup or production.

Are you involved in raising awareness of the matters surrounding process safety management and risk assessment?
Yes. Forums and conferences usually present an opportunity to raise more awareness of these matters. It can be a sensitive topic at local conferences in such a small twin island republic, but at international conferences we often discuss numerous international incidents while maintaining confidentiality. I also train and volunteer my time on such matters at local universities every year. I hope the Energy Chamber and others do more to recognise companies like us who execute Failure Analysis and Inspection activities surrounding PSM, instead of concentrating on the large sponsors who rely on and utilise our expertise.

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