What is a fire safety review?
A Fire safety review is a safety review process for assessment of fire risk from potential flammable release hazards associated with the infrastructure of selected plant sections.
Objective of Safety Review
The objective of Safety Review is to ensure that a fire, hydrocarbon spill or vapor release anywhere in the plant can be adequately dealt with to prevent escalation of the emergency (fires or explosion).
This enables assessment of the adequacy of the fire prevention, fire protection and fire fighting measures.
A Safety Review can be conducted in parallel to HAZOP study for new or existing process facility.
Concept of Fire Safety Review
A Fire Safety Review consists of these essential activities:
- Determination of flammable release scenarios and resulting fire risk. These activities evaluate process conditions, potential leak sources, release type, release quantities, failure scenarios, etc related to release of fluids.
- Assessment of plant infrastructure: layout, drainage systems, road plans, fire water disposal, plant floors grading, etc.
- Assessment of mitigation factors: emergency isolation, ESD system, relief valves, safe ventilation, etc.
Following these assessments, the adequacy of following control measures should be reviewed:
- Detection equipment: gas detectors, flame detectors, etc.
- Alarm equipment/systems: manual call point, DCS alarm, mimic panel
- Passive protections: fireproofing, fire detectors, firefighting equipment
- Active protections: ESD, water spray system, steam ring, fixed foam systems
- Response procedures/plans
