Pre-Startup Safety Review Success Story

Client: Confidential

Sector: District Cooling Services

Location: GCC

Background

The Entity is a leading district cooling service provider and developer with a pan global presence, providing energy-efficient, cost-effective, and environmentally friendly year-round cooling solutions.

The entity sought the services of Gorisco to conduct a Pre-Startup Safety Review (PSSR) for one of its new plants, which was ready for commissioning in GCC region.  The organization wanted to demonstrate its commitment to business continuity by first securing the life safety of its employees by conducting a PSSR.

PSSR intends to provide a final check prior to the commissioning of the facility to ensure that all the design and construction aspects are in order. Also, the PSSR checks that all appropriate elements of process safety management have been satisfactorily addressed by the organization. The PSSR consists of a checklist of items to be thoroughly verified before a process begins or restarts to ensure that potential hazards have been properly mitigated. Creating such a list is a critical step in identifying potential hazards such as fire, accidents, equipment failure, process hazards, etc., and effectively mitigating the same to avoid workplace incidents and resultant damage to individuals and assets.

Objectives of the Project:

1.     Identification and Mitigation of Hazards:

PSSR allowed for a systematic examination of the facility, equipment, and processes to identify potential safety hazards. This proactive approach shall help the entity in recognizing and addressing the hazards upfront before putting the plant in to operation.

2.     Reduces Incidents and Accidents:

By identifying potential safety hazards and implementing necessary controls before operations begin, the likelihood of incidents and accidents occurring has significantly reduced. This helped the entity in preventing injuries, damage to equipment, and environmental incidents.

The primary goal of a PSSR is to protect the safety of personnel working in the facility as well as the surrounding community. Identifying and mitigating safety risks during the pre-startup phase has contributed to a safer working environment for employees and helps prevent harm to the staff.

3.     Optimizes Emergency Response Plans:

The PSSR has ensured a comprehensive review of emergency response plans and procedures. By ensuring that these plans are in place and effective, the entity can respond promptly and effectively in the event of an emergency or unexpected incident.

4.     Supports Continuous Improvement:

The lessons learned during the PSSR process shall contribute to a culture of continuous improvement at the Entity. This information shall be used for refining procedures, training programs, and safety protocols for future projects.

Our Approach

The PSSR was carried out by using an exhaustive checklist with specific questions to examine whether the requirements for PSSR are being met.

We adopted the following methodology to conduct the PSSR:

1.     The opening meeting was conducted with officials responsible for Projects, Operations and Maintenance (O&M) and Health, Safety and Environment (HSE).

2.     We conducted the site visit of the plant in scope - all the areas and facilities in reference to the checklist were inspected to validate HSE requirements.

3.     We visited one of their running plants of a higher capacity to understand the operations and maintenance procedures.

4.     One of the Energy Transfer Stations was also visited for a better understanding of the operations.

5.     The closing meeting was conducted with management officials to apprise the major observations, findings and to suggest mitigation measures to close out the non-conformities.

6.     A report was issued incorporating the observations made along with the recommendations.

7.     The report was presented to the management to highlight the hits and misses.

Benefits & Values

The benefits and values to the Client from this project were:

1.     Life Safety is the priority!  Business comes later. By conducting the PSSR review, the entity demonstrated its commitment to life safety and gave confidence to all its stakeholders that the organization’s priorities are in the right place.

2.     PSSR also encouraged the entity to examine key aspects where they are not compliant as any incident at the plant site could be detrimental to the entity’s reputation and strategic goals.

3.     The entity is in a phase where it is expanding to other regions globally. Such due diligence will demonstrate its focus and professionalism which would indirectly help in attracting more business opportunities if business partners are aware and confident that the plants and people working there are safe and healthy.

For Gorisco Group, it was a proud moment because our work was recognized and well appreciated by the entity.

Based on their good experience with us, the entity awarded us their BCMS Implementation project which speaks volumes about their confidence on us.

This project gave us lots of insights and experience in analysing Health, Safety, and Environment requirements for plant operations based on various regional and international standards, regulations, and best practices.