The dynamic requirements of national and international regulations and increasingly challenging economic conditions are placing a growing demand on the chemical and process industries to extend the life span of theirassets and operate them harder than originally intended.

Running assets longer and harder means that the assets can sometimes operate at their safe operating limits for longer than originally planned at the conceptual stage of the facility. A key challenge to this mode of operation is the risk posed by ageing plant. KK Risk has found that there are several factors which relate to plant ageing, the actual ‘age’ of asset is often not the most important factor. In our experience, it is how the plant has been operated and maintained.

The management of ageing plant requires a robust asset integrity management programme that will minimise plant downtime and at the same ensure that major accident risks are reduced to as low as reasonably practicable.

At KK Risk, our approach is to use our in-house ‘Point Based Criticality (PBC)’ system’. Our PBC system is easily calibrated against the client’s corporate risk tolerability matrix; this approach allows the client to focus their limited resources on the appropriate asset. The outcome of the PBC system can be used to allocate maintenance strategies or decide if a more detailed failure analysis such as a FMEA or FMECA, is required.