Safety divide

In an ideal world, all companies would operate a comprehensive and integrated safety system as part of a multi-layered control architecture. As detailed in our Plant Safety feature, this should encompass everything from early problem detection, field device data, alarm and shutdown procedures to operator training and monitoring of people and assets on-site.

Likewise, all companies would draw up and implement a corporate safety philosophy to ensure that everyone working at or visiting a site understands their role in ensuring the security of its systems and communications networks.

Unfortunately, it seems, such set-ups are a distant pipedream for many medium- and large-sized operators — if the HSE's third progress report on its investigation into last December's explosion at the Buncefield oil depot is in any way representative of reality.

The fact that the filling of a massive oil tank can proceed unmonitored for several hours is shocking indeed, as is the absence or failure of systems to detect the escape of vast quantities of fuel to form the explosive cloud that devastated the site.

As our news pages reveal, alarm systems for tanks such as those at Buncefield are checked only periodically and the type of controls used there have been a source of problems for many years.

While incidents on the scale of Buncefield are, thankfully, rare, the indications are that the HSE's final report into the incident will identify many shortcomings in safety culture, practices and systems — and not just at the Hertford site.

The likelihood of tighter regulation and the increasing availability of systems and technologies to reduce risk suggests that plant operators will have fewer and fewer get-out clauses when it comes to ensuring plant safety in the near future.