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Service Categories

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CATree©

CATree is an easy-to-use software that provides a systematic, consistent, repeatable process to identify a wide range of potential causes.

Mission-Critical Data Centers

Protecting Uptime, Budget, and Compliance Across the Data Center Lifecycle

Explosion Protection Services

BakerRisk’s specialists and proprietary technology helps your facility reduce explosive and fire hazard risk, safeguard site personnel and equipment, and more. Explore the details here.

Risk Assessment for Transportation

Transporting hazardous materials can pose unique risk management challenges. See how BakerRisk uses the latest methodologies to manage your unique transportation risk needs.

Pressure Relief and Flare Analysis

Drawing upon our knowledge and industry experience, BakerRisk identifies potential deficiencies and recommends improvements for your pressure relief and flaring systems.

Finite Element Analysis Services

Discover how BakerRisk leverages finite element analysis (FEA) to analyze structural responses to hazards, measure blast propagation, and design safer buildings for site personnel.

Dust Hazard Analysis

BakerRisk’s Dust Hazard Analyses (DHA) are invaluable when maximizing worksite safety against combustible dust explosions and ensuring compliance with national safety codes. Discover more here.

Computational Fluid Dynamics

When a screening level analysis falls short, Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD) tools shine. See how BakerRisk’s CFD solutions can generate high-fidelity, actionable results.

Quantitative Risk Assessment

See how our QRA studies go beyond simple risk quantification to provide results that drive practical and effective risk reduction solutions.

Facility Siting Studies

Facility siting studies are recommended or required by most regulatory bodies. Explore how our experts have contributed to shaping and establishing widely-accepted industry protocols.

Consequence Analysis

Determine the impact of a potential event, design facilities for safety, and maximize personnel safety with BakerRisk’s extensive consequence analysis testing programs and best-in-class research and development team.

MaxLoss©

BakerRisk’s proprietary MaxLoss software allows users to efficiently and accurately determine the potential maximum loss event for a facility based on a variety of user-defined potential loss scenarios. The tool provides an easy and consistent process to quantify property damage loss potentials as a function of potential credible events on site.

FireHAT©

FireHAT© is our proprietary Fire Hazard Analysis software, an innovative modeling tool used to support our Fire Hazard and Mitigation Analysis (FHMA) studies. The objective of a FHMA is to perform a comprehensive evaluation of potential, credible fire scenarios that the site would be expected to respond to and successfully control.

Business Interruption Risk

Discover how our detailed review of your BI risk provides you with the critical input needed when considering capital projects or other plant improvements.

Nelson-Farrar Cost Index

Explore the Nelson-Farrar Cost Index (NFCI), a service that provides industry-leading cost escalation data for various operating and construction cost factors.

Fire Hazard Analysis and Emergency Response Planning

BakerRisk’s professional team and decades of experience can help you develop and implement effective emergency response and fire hazard mitigation plans to limit incident impact, ensure business continuity, and more.

Insurance Risk Engineering

For over 30 years, BakerRisk’s experienced Risk Engineering professionals have defined the industry’s “gold” standard for performing property insurance risk assessment. Learn more.

F&GTool©

Our consultants perform fire and gas detection mapping to ensure that releases at your facility are detected early to prevent an incident from occurring. Using F>ool©, our consultant develops a detailed and defensible layout for fire, flammable gas, toxic gas, and acoustic detectors to detect potential releases within a process area at your facility.

HACTool©

HACTool is our proprietary hazardous area classification software developed to automate HAC studies, apply relevant methodologies utilizing an innovative layered approach to structured data, HACTool seamlessly links process streams to equipment, delivering numerous client advantages

SIS/SIL

Explore how BakerRisk’s SIS/SIL Selection/Determination approach consistently assists teams in pinpointing critical priorities for high-reliability safety systems.

Fire and Gas Detection Mapping

The precision of our fire and gas detector placement methodology removes uncertainty through quantitative modeling and three-dimensional space detector analysis. See how it works here.

Hazardous Area Classification

Discover BakerRisk’s advanced solutions for HAC studies, designed to deliver precise documentation for simplified facility requirement assessments.

Materials Engineering and Forensics

BakerRisk delivers a wide range of services in materials engineering, mechanical integrity assessments, and material failure analysis and prevention for equipment and structures.

Incident Investigation

BakerRisk has an esteemed reputation for integrity, earned from performing incident investigations objectively, scientifically, systematically and thoroughly for more than 30 years.

Risk Management for Hydrogen and Carriers Services

Leverage our 35+ years of R&D and testing experience to help characterize and understand the safety challenges of the production and infrastructure buildout of the rapidly growing hydrogen economy.

Biofuel Risk Management Services

Our world-class safety expertise is a natural fit to identify and manage the risks associated with the production and use of biologically derived energy solutions.

Risk Management Services for Battery and BESS

Benefit from our experience in testing and R&D, as well as conducting flammable and explosion hazard identification studies, to characterize and understand the unique challenges of batteries and Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS).

Shock and Fragment Enclosure (SAFE)

SAFE™ enclosures are turnkey solutions for hazard containment. Leveraging a streamlined design-build operation, the BakerRisk team provides a single point of contact for design, construction, and installation of necessary enclosures and equipment.

Structural Solutions

FORTRESS blast-resistant buildings, secure testing enclosures, and other structural solutions from BakerRisk can protect personnel from potential worksite hazards. Explore our solutions here.

Hazard Containment Enclosure Design and Assessment

BakerRisk’s hazard mitigation strategies and industry experience enable us to develop and deliver new hazard containment enclosures or test buildings and assess existing structures for efficacy and safety. Learn more here.

Explosives Safety Siting

BakerRisk offers guidance on explosive safety processes, quantity-distance (QD) siting, structural analysis, and more. See how our experience can benefit you with our explosive safety siting services.

Protective Building Design

BakerRisk’s experience and industry expertise are ideal for helping you design and install resilient, blast-resistant buildings for site personnel safety. Discover the details here.

Shelter-in-Place (SIP) Design and Assessments

BakerRisk helps you design durable structures to withstand any potential worksite hazard. Learn how we design, manufacture, and deliver new buildings, as well as upgrade existing buildings, here.

PHA-Tool©

BakerRisk’s PHA-Tool© is a comprehensive software suite designed to help facilitators efficiently conduct a process hazard analysis using various methodologies, including HAZOP, LOPA, HAZID, and others.

QRATool©

QRATool combines initiating event frequencies, ignition probabilities, weather distribution probabilities, and occupancy data with consequence data (fires, explosions, and toxic vulnerabilities) to efficiently generate associated risk for your facility.

Process Safety Management Services

See how our two-step compliance auditing and risk-based process safety approach can help drive better process safety performance at your facility.

Process Hazard Analysis (PHA)/HAZOP/LOPA

Handling and processing hazardous materials can be dangerous. BakerRisk’s process hazard analysis (PHA) and related services can help you identify and mitigate the risks associated with your facility or industry.

Materials Engineering and Forensics Testing Lab

BakerRisk delivers a wide range of services in materials engineering, mechanical integrity assessments, and material failure analysis and prevention for equipment and structures.

BakerRisk Test Facilities

BakerRisk offers three test facilities for all your research and experimental needs. Learn more about facility equipment, laboratories, and more here.

Research and Development Programs

BakerRisk’s research and development programs offer opportunities for collaborative understanding and the development of industry-wide safety standards. Learn more here.

Testing and Performance Validation

BakerRisk’s full scale structural response testing services and fully equipped facilities allow you to determine the durability of any facility structure. Discover more here.

Not sure which service you need? Give us a call.

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All Resources

Conference Papers

The Value of Investigating and Trending Minor Failures to Prevent Major Incidents

Overview

author

Nicholas Cherolis
Dan Benac
Dorothy Shaffer
Jedediah Redman

published on

June 2018

Catastrophic or major incidents are typically investigated immediately, but what about the near misses or minor failures that might be precursors to major incidents? Are they investigated? Major failures often do not occur as one isolated issue or event; there are often less severe precursors to a major event. This paper presents a best practice and reasons for reviewing minor equipment failures in order to avoid major events as demonstrated through the judicious analysis of minor failures. Several case histories and the lessons learned from these minor equipment failure investigations are presented to encourage investigation of what may initially appear as insignificant failures, for their value in prevention of major incidents.

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Get to know the authors.

Meet the experts who brought this paper to life.

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nicholas cherolis

dan benac, PE, CFEI, ASM Fellow

Dan Benac, PE, CFEI, ASM Fellow

Mr. Benac is a member of BakerRisk’s Materials Engineering Group. His work focuses on structural integrity and material issues, failure analysis of plant equipment, materials evaluations, and materials selection for designs. Mr. Benac has conducted hundreds of in-depth investigations and analyses of service failures and mishaps for a variety of structures for the nuclear, refining, petrochemical, and fossil-power industries. He currently supports the investigation of equipment such as pipelines, rotor shafts, valves, pumps, diesel-engine components, heat exchangers, reactor vessels, piping, compressor, and turbine blades and disks.

Mr. Benac has co-authored fifty peer-reviewed technical papers related to equipment reliability. Mr. Benac also serves as program manager for the global Ammonia & Fertilizer Joint Industry Program and subject matter expert on damage mechanisms and mitigation options for ammonia and fertilizer equipment.

Committees

  • American Petroleum Institute (API): API 941 - ASME/API 579 Fitness for Service
  • American Society for Metals (ASM): Failure Analysis Society, Alamo Chapter
  • National Association of Corrosion Engineers (NACE): NACE San Antonio Section

Specialties

  • Incident Investigation
  • Biofuel Risk Management Services
  • Materials Engineering and Forensics
  • Research and Development Programs
  • Risk Assessment for Transportation
  • Risk Management Services for Battery and BESS
  • Risk Management for Hydrogen and Carriers Services

Papers

View all papers

dorothy shaffer

jedediah redman

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Leveraging Quantitative Risk Assessments for Facility Siting of Biofuel Facilities

As the biofuels industry continues to expand in support of global decarbonization mandates and objectives, facility owners and developers are being challenged to balance production efficiency, operational reliability, and personnel safety.

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Strategic Approach to Fire Protection for Biofuels Facilities (Paper PDF)

As high hazard facilities, biofuels sites should focus on developing a fire protections strategy informed by performance-based analysis so strategies implemented meet the unique challenges found at each facility.

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Building Design Requirements – Utilizing your Facility Siting Study Effectively (PowerPoint PDF)

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