Articles - Asset Integrity Management

For the U.S. biofuels industry, regulatory compliance is critical but complex, involving various federal and state regulations. Ensuring compliance with these regulations is not only challenging but essential to avoid costly fines and operational disruptions. The key is leveraging the right asset integrity management (AIM) software system to streamline the process and ensure readiness for any audit.

Few industries understand the rigorous environmental, safety, legal and regulatory requirements of asset integrity management as intimately as the Midstream Oil & Gas sector. Without proper integrity management of their critical network of assets, catastrophic loss of containment could result in increased environmental hazards, loss of life, devastating lawsuits, and unplanned shutdowns – costing owner operators tens of millions of dollars.

The Petrochemical industry has a deep understanding of the intricate challenges of asset integrity management. Owner operators within this sector typically oversee a diverse range of equipment types, materials, and processes, often more varied than those in the Oil & Gas sector. Additionally, Petrochemical companies operate within a heightened risk landscape, encompassing safety and environmental mishaps such as loss of containment, resulting in toxic and flammable chemical releases, all stemming from the inherent properties of the materials involved.

For owner operators of asset-heavy corporations, the driving impetus behind daily operations remains consistent: How can asset failures be minimized without incurring the high costs associated with inspection intervals and turnarounds?

The immediate cost saving advantages of adopting an RBI approach to asset integrity management are gaining momentum. Corporations are increasingly realizing that RBI, with its ability to intelligently analyze equipment’s probability of failure (POF) vs consequence of failure (COF), is the prudent approach to managing critical assets. Embracing RBI assures that a structured, systematic, and technically defensible approach is used to make decisions. RBI significantly reduces instances of equipment failure and minimizes unplanned shutdowns.

In the realm of asset integrity management, where every moment counts in financial terms, organizations must prioritize strategies that are not only cost-effective but also prioritize safety, regulatory compliance, asset integrity, operational efficiency, and data-driven decision-making. This is particularly crucial for owner operators who are burdened by unnecessary expenses resulting from over inspection, under inspection and outdated inspection methods. Notably, equipment failures annually cost the US refining industry billions, with a significant portion attributed to static equipment loss of containment.

In asset integrity, effective data management is crucial to enable data correlation, the application of risk models and risk-based inspection scheduling. The Oil & Gas, Chemical, Pipeline and other industry sectors with asset numbers in the thousands struggle with handling vast amount of unrelatable (siloed) data.

Risk Based Inspection (RBI). A pillar in modern asset integrity technology, its benefits have become widely known and accepted (we examined all of the ways RBI reduces shutdowns and improves profitability in previous articles, here and here). The intelligent risk analysis afforded in comparing an asset’s unique probability of failure (PoF) vs. its consequence of failure (CoF) allows operators to reliably extend inspection intervals. In fact, RBI has been shown to reduce inspection points by as much as 80%, and cut down the likelihood of unplanned shutdowns by more than half.

When it comes to the asset integrity management (AIM) of plants and facilities, it seems that everyone has a different definition of what regulatory compliance entails. With so many differing regulatory bodies across the globe (each with different requirements) it can be difficult to pinpoint exactly what steps a company needs to take to ensure that compliance will be met. Thus, it’s a challenging tenant of AIM to get right – and yet, with the risk of hefty fines in case of an audit failure, it’s also an expensive one to get wrong.

One area of increasing interest in the world of asset integrity management (AIM) for plants and facilities is that of Key Performance Indicators (KPI). Leveraged properly, KPIs can be the catalyst for future advanced analytics of your equipment data. They provide a rare window of insight into the efficacy of various elements of your inspection data management (IDMS), equipping you with the tools you need to hone and target your strategies for better asset performance, reduced inspection costs, and superior mechanical integrity.