Safety during shutdowns

Five tasks a service provider should provide

Safety during shutdowns

Every plant shutdown presents a great challenge – from an organisational, process, economic and safety point of view. All decisions are marked by the conflict of interests between adherence to schedules on the one hand and due diligence and safety on the other hand. Work quality, environmental protection and especially occupational health and safety as well as risk mitigation have to be ensured despite tight deadlines. Five action points to guarantee safe work processes have been identified for safety service providers.

A study conducted by Dräger and T.A. Cook shows that, according to the answers received, 80% of all accidents during downtime are due to human error. The number of accidents can be significantly reduced if a professional safety service provider is present throughout the shutdown and accepted by all stakeholders. This partner can take the required action from the planning phase onwards to help achieve the goal of zero accidents. Many plant operators have realised that by cooperating with partners, they can fully concentrate on their actual core competences. The overall responsibility for health and safety at work remains with the customer, but a service provider is appointed to implement and monitor the necessary measures.

During the first few days of a plant shutdown, the motivation of all parties involved (plant operators and contractors) is still very high: the project is on time, all process steps ideally have sufficient staff and material and everything is running smoothly. However, after a while, this motivation starts to decrease, delays occur and it becomes necessary to increase or reduce personnel and material levels, with adjacent steps also affected. A professional safety service provider’s task is to monitor and support all work during the entire project phase and maintain an overview of safety-relevant aspects. If appropriately authorised, this provider can take preventive and corrective action, initiate the rescue chain in an emergency and provide first aid where necessary.

If up to 4000 additional employees of partner companies are on the premises simultaneously during a plant-wide shutdown, all of whom need to be deployed as efficiently and with as little waiting time as possible, everything has to run smoothly. This is only realistic if the approval processes for each step are exactly defined. Professional process management ensures transparency while appropriate tools allow the flexible deployment of staff. Precise process planning also contributes to increased efficiency: if confined spaces such as drums, columns, furnaces and machinery to be cleaned or serviced are gas-tested and approved by gas testers in the early morning before essential work is due to begin, a work permit can be issued and the confined spaces accessed without any further delay.

Due to time and cost restraints, safety briefings for staff and contractors frequently only take place on the plant itself and in large groups shortly before the work starts. Special tasks and individual skillsets, especially of contractor employees, cannot always be taken into account here. The situation is different if an external safety service provider is involved in the shutdown planning phase and can invite the contractors to safety meetings in advance. These meetings may then be followed by specific individual training. This saves time during the shutdown, reduces uncertainties and motivates the external teams.

In the conflict between price and performance, the safety performance of contractors is an important selection criterion – accidents can have very serious consequences. Systematic recording, documentation and analysis of unsafe behaviour and near-accidents during shutdowns represent a good basis for optimising the selection of contractors for the next project. Long-term reporting by an independent service provider is also helpful since the selection decision can be supported with data from earlier shutdowns.

Especially during stressful projects such as shutdowns, misunderstandings can occur between the plant operator’s and the contractor’s employees due to different expectations, working cultures, etc. External safety service providers, on the other hand, who see themselves as coaches, act as consultants on equal terms who can help and negotiate in critical situations. This partnership approach makes it easier to convey the meaning and purpose of safety guidelines and makes sure they are complied with out of conviction rather than simply to avoid potential sanctions.

Dräger Rental & Safety Services combines modules tailored to each customer‘s needs to ensure a safe and cost-optimised shutdown. The personnel charged with this task are specifically trained and instructed to deal with shutdown scenarios. From individual safety coordinators through to complete HR organisations and management structures, Dräger offers a comprehensive set of services for effective personnel deployment. Its large pool of staff enables safety personnel to be flexibly assigned. Safety-related material is also provided. As a manufacturer, Dräger can moreover satisfy explicit individual requirements. Service employees maintain and clean the material on site in mobile breathing protection and gas detection workshops. This combination of personnel and material provisioning ensures holistic, customer-specific safety management throughout the shutdown.

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Thielo Hammer

Manager Portfolio Management,

Dräger Rental & Safety Services