Application of Inherent Safety to Maintenance-related Major Accident Prevention on Offshore Installations

Organizations associated with the handling, processing or storage of hazardous substances, have the potential for major accidents. The offshore industry, for example, handles dangerous substances like crude oil and gas. The operations of the offshore industry are usually quite complex and it is a common practice to deploy and maintain multiple safety barriers. However, deficiencies in maintenance have been significant contributors to the occurrence of major accidents. Procedural, passive and active risk reduction strategies are often relied upon, but these have yet to achieve optimal risk reduction due to inadequacies in procedures or the degradable, physical safety systems. Inherent safety, which can be considered to be a subset of green chemistry and engineering, is known to be a more robust and cost-effective risk reduction option and applicable at any stage during design or operation. Based on this knowledge, we intend to exploit the versatility of the principles of inherent safety for the purpose of achieving improved risk reduction in relation to maintenance. The main objective of this paper is to investigate how inherent safety can contribute to maintenancerelated, major accident risk reduction on offshore installations. The paper builds on a review of literature related to risk reduction strategies, inherent safety and the maintenance work process.