Articles - Risk Based Inspection

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for owner operators who are burdened by unnecessary expenses resulting from over inspection, under inspection and outdated inspection methods.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.