How RBI inspections can reduce overall compliance risks & costs
Electrical equipment in hazardous area inspection campaigns often begin with a clean slate, with little or no historical design, equipment certification and inspection information available to the inspection personnel. Inspectors head out into the field with little more than an equipment list and inspect the installation ‘as they see it.’
Unsurprisingly, this approach generates large numbers of unnecessary defects and follow up actions during inspections. For example, where certificates, declarations, specific conditions for safe use, justifications for use or intrinsically safe circuit descriptive system documents are not available to the inspector, defects or follow-up actions are usually recorded.
Alternatively, the inspector may leave the checks on hold until this information can be located and confirmed. Lack of in-field access to compliance documentation thus results in inefficient, ineffective inspections, where actual defects risk being lost amongst the flood of spurious items raised due to uncertainty and poor information availability. Often the same spurious items are raised repeatedly in subsequent campaigns, for the same reasons.
Certified tablets combined with Ex inspection and dossier management platforms such as Ex-Online have provided a step change opportunity to improve the effectiveness of inspection campaigns and verification dossier management. Such systems can provide in-field access to engineering and compliance data, allowing faster inspections with higher quality, more consistent data capture, automation of reporting, and much lower levels of follow up activity. This not only translates into immediate cost savings but can also provide a platform for implementation of Risk Based Inspection (RBI) methodologies to unlock further efficiencies.
Rhys Davies, General Manager at Ex-Online, QGE Australia, will be giving a presentation at 11.10 CET on 17th March on data driven, optimised management of electrical equipment in hazardous areas.
This presentation will provide a brief overview of how effective inspections, data driven, with consistent defect categorisation and reporting are essential foundations for the successful implementation of RBI methodologies, and how RBI, carefully implemented can reduce overall compliance risk and costs for facility owners.
