7/4/2021 (12) THE FIVE PITFALLS IN MANAGING SAFETY CRITICAL ELEMENTS (SCE) | LinkedIn

Paul Stam

THE FIVE PITFALLS

Paul Stam
Sr. Consultant Asset Integrity Management at Stork Technical Services Nederland

4 articles  Follow

Asset Management Consultancy

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What are SCE?

Safety Critical Elements (SCE) in the Chemical and Oil and Gas Industry are directed by

a set of (regulatory) requirements for managing physical or non-physical elements. These

elements (e.g. safety valves, lockout-Tagout procedures) represent safety barrier

identified by their purpose to prevent, control, respond or mitigate the effect of a safety or

environmental Major Accident (MA).    

Why are SCE important?

The main purpose of identifying SCE and the related performance standards is to develop

a focus on critical equipment and procedures. The idea behind SCE is that it is much

more effective to manage a smaller number of unambiguous defined elements than to try

to deal with everything that can be related to safety. Most companies are not able to

manage their safety risk effectively without a structured approach and the reduction of

complexity. The SCE methodology will constitute a considerable foundation to the

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management of these safety risks by the clear approach of the methodology and focus on

the safety elements that really matter if taken into account the five most common pitfalls.

The five pitfalls 

1.  SCE are not defined by assessing the probability of failures

Often we do not have hard evidence to determine the probability of hazardous events, but

we can determine the consequences of a failure or threat. Moreover In most risk based

models the probability is considered null if a hazardous event have not taken place in the

past. Of course is this no safety guarantee for the future and there is so a probability of

risk. On the other hand, from a maintenance perspective it will not be in conflict with risk

based concepts where the probability do have a significant role. SCE identification is

required so the proper resources can be allocated and activities developed to reduce

foreseeable risks. Risk based maintenance concepts could be one of those activities

imposed to keep the SCE fit for purpose, if failure and degradation information become

available.

2.  SCE are not part of the elements designed to generate

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There is an important difference between the elements which are designed for production

or the reduction of value loss and those which reduces the risk of a major accidents.

Where the first depends strongly on the economic and financial circumstances and

targets, the SCE may not be compromised by cutting budgets or other monetary

considerations. 

Secondly, in most literature SCE are also elements through which failure could cause or

contribute to a MA. This statement is questionable because even a toaster or almost all

production related equipment have the potential to cause or contribute to an MA. In most

cases fatal failure of production related equipment could cause a threat and the SCE is the

barriers that prevents the scenario that leads to a Major Accident (MA). The consequence

of using this broader definition and and misinterpretation of  the relation between safety

layers (SCE) and fatal failures of production related equipment (threats) is a higher

probability that safety initiatives fail due to lack of focus and controlled complexity.

3.  SCE are not only restricted to physical equipment.

There is considerable evidence that safety procedures and the applied human safety

performance is more decisive to sustaining safety than equipment. While human induced

failures are in many cases the initial case of major accidents, equipment is often the

secondarily safety barrier to prevent or control a hazard. Moreover all failures induced by

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human activities, equipment and procedures along with external threats must be

considered as a potential risk. Suitable procedures, human competencies and safety

equipment must be in place and used to avoid that a major accident.

4.  SCE identification process is more effective before

The management of SCE is often monitored by regulatory bodies (e.g. UK, Norway, and

Denmark) introduced after the asset was built and in operation. Assessing equipment,

structures, systems and procedures and identifying SCE afterwards at this stage in the

asset lifecycle is a labor-intensive process in which a whole team of specialists (e.g.

operators, engineers, HSSE specialists etc.) is involved. In essence, this process is not as

different as other mandatory safety studies before commissioning. If the SCE

requirements are clear, it is far more logical and effective to integrate the SCE

identification and the specification of its performance standards at the commissioning

stage.

5. Handling SCE is not only applicable to production and

Effective management of safety risks is strongly dependent on human capabilities. All

staff must have the competence and the motivation to prevent hazardous failures, with the

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correct procedures to support. Departments who are involved in the recruitment of staff

and the outsourcing of activities are at first responsible to develop and implement

procedures to guarantee these human capabilities. Furthermore, although the introduction,

monitoring and evaluation of SCE is a primary management responsibility, safety in

general is the concern of everybody. 

Finally where procedures and equipment does not replace human common sense it is also

no excuse to violate safety procedures or disregard the upkeep of SCE.

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 2nd
Andy Bush
2y
Retired at The farm
In my experience the SCE idea can get misused or misunderstood to be a way to
bypass doing a safety case and a proper failure mode effect analysis (FMEA). I have
done a lot of work with safety critical elements (SCE) documentation. I have also
done a lot of reliability analysis including failure mode and residual risk analysis. I
often discovered during these studies that the least likely item can turn out to be
most critical to the safety of the system. You do not discover this using SCE's. SCEs
are great for working out a maintenance regime starting point for generic
equipment. But again everything can be safety critical in a system, not just the
obvious items like safety valves. Nuts and bolts, are safety critical, so where do you
stop when deciding which items get the SCE treatment?  The FMEA analysis has
led to some interesting arguments with manufacturer's that had been making the
same system for a couple of decades. They thought their system was as safe as
reasonably possible, and took some convincing to change the design slightly.
Usually design changes were minor, it was the shock that a weakness had been
identified that created the initial resistance. I always offer a solution when notifying
there is a problem.

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Paul Stam 2nd 2y
Sr. Consultant Asset Integrity Management at
Stork Technical Services Nederland
Andy, thanks for your contribution to the subject. What is your
recommended maintenance concept in addition to SCE management.

Like Reply

 
Andrew Britten 2nd 2y
HSSE Advisor SE UK at Calor Gas Ltd
I enjoyed this interesting and informative article that puts SCE into easy language.
Thank you. 

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