Operating companies' roles in preventing contractors from being affected by process chemicals during plant shutdowns

摘要

Systematic procedures to prevent contract workers from causing accidents during plant outages have been in place for many years in the Finnish process industry. It seems, however, that the way the safety of the contractors is secured by the operating companies themselves is not as systematic. A Finnish study has been carried out in order to investigate how five Finnish operating companies - all covered by the EU's Major Hazards Directive -are dealing with process and chemical safety during maintenance shutdowns of their installations. The focus of this paper is on ways that the operating companies can minimize the risk of exposing contract workers to process chemicals. In addition, a new hazard analysis method developed for identifying potential chemical hazards during shutdowns is also presented.