SUMMARY
When developing or strengthening a culture of safety in an organization, the word “culture” should bear as much emphasis as “safety.” Without organizational dedication, safety protocols or procedures can risk seeming ancillary to the operation’s shared objective. But ultimately, safety must be a core value of any operation dealing with potentially hazardous gases. Buy-in from all levels helps prevent weak links where a serious lapse in safety might occur. Safety protects not only the practitioner of safety, but that employee’s coworkers and others as well. Upstream and downstream oil and gas operations, along with power plants and other industrial facilities, should partner with technology providers that emphasize safety. For example, FLIR, designer and producer of thermal imaging cameras and sensors, is determined to be “The World’s Sixth Sense,” a goal explicitly rooted in bringing about a safer future. Organizations that work with gas that can cause injury should seek to integrate effective and efficient technologies that ensure safe operational practices. Recent advancements in Optical Gas Imaging (OGI) technology has enabled companies in a number of industries to improve and bolster a culture of safety.
IMPLICATIONS OF SAFETY EQUIPMENT FOR CULTURE
Many common safety practices depend upon safety equipment that operates solely within an area of relative unsafety. The wearable gas monitor plays an important function in protecting workers, but it only warns of a danger once the person wearing it is standing in a cloud of gas. There are several other technologies that allow operators to find an unsafe condition within a piece of equipment, but few of these operate until the user is within that unsafe condition. This holds true for low-tech but prevalent safety tools: namely, the common soap bubble. In sum, these technologies and their results could send a cultural message that some risk is acceptable and perhaps inevitable, contradicting the message of safety. Just as certain safety tools carry an apparent inevitability of personal risk, so do some routine safety tasks. A prime example from the upstream oil and gas sector is the practice of tank gauging. Employees must scale a ladder and walk out onto a catwalk in order to extend a dipstick into the liquid. The worker stands directly over a tank, where a potentially high concentration of gas emissions may lurk undetected. Downstream, the risk profile changes. Many of the hydrocarbon gases in refineries are more toxic than those present at upstream facilities. As a result, an employee who unknowingly enters an unsafe area could face more pronounced negative consequences, or negative effects in less time. A prominent method for detecting unsafe gas levels in this context are wearable gas monitors.
OGI Strengthens Safety Culture
The new affordability of OGI technology not only enhances safety monitoring for oil and gas applications, but also strengthens an organization’s culture of safety. OGI protects personnel by showing the safety threat from a distance, before a worker is in harm’s way. It empowers any user to establish the facts of an unsafe situation in order to seek a swift remedy. Plus, as more personnel carry the capability, more vigilant eyes can contribute to the safety of an operation. These benefits are not exclusive to upstream and downstream oil and gas facilities. The lower price-point of quality equipment allows new industries to make use of OGI as a tool for environmental stewardship and safety. In addition to the natural gas company, power plants that turn natural gas into electricity can use OGI to protect employees and operations from undetected leaks. Utility companies are now purchasing OGI cameras for this purpose, beyond using the technology for compliance only. In the same way, renewable energy companies can use OGI to monitor gas, locate leaks, and improve the culture of safety.
CONCLUSION: ADDED VALUE FOR USERS AND CUSTOMERS
The key success factors for bioenergy facilities continue to be safety, efficiency and profitability. When carrying out gas detection, it is of vital importance that inspectors obtain as complete a picture as possible of the condition of a given plant. A FLIR infrared camera like the FLIR GF320 is an extremely important tool for tracking down potential gas leaks. The FLIR GF320 has certainly provided significant added value for IBS GmbH and its customers, ensuring optimized operation and safety.
Learn more:
https://youtu.be/3VVbgl0409A – FLIR GFX320
https://youtu.be/bVdsgTZNbIs – FLIR GFx320 for safety
