Facility siting studies are recommended or required by most regulatory bodies to analyze impacts from events resulting in explosion, fire, or toxic impacts to onsite and/or offsite personnel. Our professionals work as a partner on your team to analyze hazards and risks taking into account your facility siting guidance protocols and project goals. Depending on your needs, BakerRisk can perform either detailed consequence-based or risk-based facility siting.
Leveraging our years of industry experience with extensive R&D programs and our uniquely designed software tools such as SafeSite3G©, we can provide comprehensive solutions to address your facility siting concerns.
Our professionals are well-versed in applicable recommended practice documents from around the world. We are actively involved on relevant committees such as the American Petroleum Institute’s (API) Recommended Practice (RP) 752 and API RP 753. BakerRisk was selected to lead the full-scale testing program to help develop requirements for placement of process plant tent structures under API RP 756.
American Petroleum Institute
Our experts understand the importance of defining Maximum Credible Event (MCE) scenarios for a consequence-based approach to ensure that the consequences are not understated and your personnel are properly protected. BakerRisk’s industry-leading consequence analysis software SafeSite3G© goes beyond just determining the hazard end points to determine building response and indoor/outdoor occupant vulnerability. With the use of SafeSite3G©, BakerRisk professionals are able to evaluate hundreds of thousands of potential scenario outcomes in a typical study to produce results with the granularity to feed a quantitative risk assessment (QRA) and/or aid your decision making process for risk mitigation.
Determining potential consequences posed by facility operations is a necessary step in the process of developing a comprehensive safety plan. Our goal of the facility siting study is to help you comply with regulations as well as leverage our unique knowledge and skills to develop your facility’s overall safety plan. We can recommend upgrades for buildings, windows, and doors for hazard mitigation and perform building leak tightness testing to ensure your workers are protected from the hazards involved with your specific processes.
[1]API (2009) “Management of Hazards Associated with Location of Process Plant Permanent Buildings,” American Petroleum Institute Recommended Practice 752 (API RP 752), 3rd Ed., API, Washington D.C.
[2]API (2007) “Management of Hazards Associated with Location of Process Plant Portable Buildings,” American Petroleum Institute Recommended Practice 753 (API RP 753), 1st Ed., API, Washington D.C.
[3]API (2014) “Management of Hazards Associated with Location of Process Plant Tents,” American Petroleum Institute Recommended Practice 756 (API RP 756), 1st Ed., API, Washington D.C.
Our engineers have performed facility siting studies at a wide range of facilities around the world including:
BakerRisk documents each facility siting study in a comprehensive report that defines inputs, explains calculation methods, provides interim calculation results to allow verification and validation of the methods employed, and summarizes results in a range of meaningful forms. Composite contour plots of overpressure, flammability, and toxicity define key endpoints and provide an overview of areas vulnerable to impacts from assessed hazards.
We compile facility siting study results in an extensive spreadsheet showing the maximum impact for each hazard scenario and each building assessed. In addition, results are presented in summary tables for easy tabulation of results. Blast impacts are presented in terms of building damage level (BDL), thermal radiation, and flammable and/or toxic gas concentration categories predicted to reach the buildings of concern.
Facility siting studies can provide a useful decision-making tool in the following situations:
- Choosing a location for a new facility
- Master planning of facility layout during design phase
- Unit layout and building locations
- Locating a new building at an existing facility
- Adding new processes or units to an existing facility
- Planning for turnarounds
- Planning for risk mitigation strategies
- i.e., occupancy reduction, upgrading a building’s blast resistance, building relocation to area less susceptible to damage, installing flammable or toxic gas detection with automatic or manual ventilation shutdown, providing personnel protective equipment, etc.
- Analyzing concerns associated with asset damage or unit interdependencies
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