Risk Based Inspection- RBI – Asset Integrity & Reliability Services

When I travel to different sites reviewing mechanical integrity and inspection programs, the facilities normally have some type of corrosion monitoring program. These programs vary widely from mature programs that have been in place for years and my include a risk-based inspection (RBI) approach and several special emphasis projects as well, or the program may only do inspections and corrosion monitoring because OSHA requires them to have a program. Most of the organizations are somewhere in the middle and do their best to find issues before they potentially become major incidents, but the problem with many types of corrosion is that it’s difficult to find. So how can we improve our odds of finding the corrosion?

A corrosion review of your facility will help you understand what types of damages mechanisms/types of corrosion you have in each part of your plant. It will help your team understand what type of corrosion that they are looking for and the most likely places that type of corrosion will occur. Additionally, with the right team you will also know the best inspection techniques to use to find the corrosion. Without a corrosion study, you may have thousands of corrosion monitoring locations that your organization is managing but are they doing you any good? If you have a damage mechanism that is a localized corrosion mechanism and you are simply doing spot ultrasonic testing (UT) on that equipment, your likelihood of finding the corrosion prior to a leak is extremely low. Spot UT will help you understand your general corrosion that might be occurring, but if you have a localized or cracking corrosion mechanism you are wasting your time and money. The corrosion review will make you smarter on Where and How to look for the potential corrosion issues and improve your corrosion monitoring program immensely.

How do I complete a corrosion review for my plant? The American Petroleum Institute (API) has published a document API-970 that will give you an excellent road map to completing a corrosion study and developing corrosion control documents for your organization. The main requirement for completing a good corrosion review is to have the proper cross-functional team available to complete the study. Key team members must include:

• Corrosion Engineer familiar with the process. This will likely be an outside contractor as most companies have limited corrosion specialist and if they do, they are normally extremely busy.
• Process Engineer familiar with the facility being reviewed.
• Inspection
• Operations
• Maintenance
• Engineering

The management of a corrosion monitoring program can be very challenging simply due to the large volume of data that being generated and can be difficult to ‘see the forest through the trees’ sometimes. With a better understanding of the corrosion types likely to occur in your plant, your ability to focus your efforts in the right places will be very beneficial.

Actions to Take:
1) Has our plant completed a corrosion study?
YES,
a. Find the study and review it personally and with your team.
b. Have the recommendations from the study been implemented into your plant’s corrosion monitoring program?
NO,
c. Obtain an estimate for completing a corrosion study and weigh the benefits, risks and value to your plant.
d. Ask the question- Do we know where to look for corrosion in our plant?

In my last blog I discussed the wealth of information available in the American Petroleum Institute (API) Standards/Recommended Practices. Today, I’m going to give a brief review of the Risk-based Inspection (RBI) API-580. With the everyday workload for most people in industry it is difficult to set aside much time for reading a standard or recommended practice even if it’s important to your job. I will give you the highlights of the standard and enable you determine if you would benefit for additional reading of the document.

The RBI document provides guidance on developing of an RBI program for fixed equipment and piping in a refinery, chemical, or related hydrocarbon processing facilities. If your facility is already using an RBI program as a tool for determine inspection plans and timing of inspection you are likely familiar with the basics. The basic of RBI is that you determine the Probability of Failure (POF) and Consequence of Failure (COF), which in turn give you an overall risk. The overall risk will allow you focus your inspection resources and funds to the equipment with the highest overall risk. If your new to the industry or have never used RBI, the first few sections of 580 gives an excellent overview of Risk-based Inspection. There are several different risk matrixes used throughout the industry, but they all follow the same basic logic of increasing risk as POF and COF increases. See the attached blog picture being an example of a risk matrix.

The major benefit of reviewing the API-580 document in detail is the step by step approach used to assisting in developing a good program and some of the limitations and pitfalls when implementing a RBI program. The document includes a number of common pitfalls (Section 17) when implementing a program which include issues with Planning, Data and Information Collection, Damage Mechanism/Failure Modes, Accessing POF/COF, Risk Determination and Management, and Risk Management with Inspection Activities.

If you follow the document’s directions and guidance it will walk you through the various steps of developing an RBI program. A few of those steps are outlined in detail in the following sections of the 580 document:

Section 6: Planning the RBI Assessment
Section 7: Data and Information Collection
Section 8: Damage Mechanisms and Failure Modes
Section 9: Access POF
Section 10: Assessing COF
Section 11: Risk Determination, Assessment, and Management
Section 12: Risk Management with Inspection Activities
Section 14: Reassessment and Updating RBI Assessments

If you have an existing RBI program that is not meeting your expectations, a review of the pitfalls and reassessment sections could be very beneficial for you and your facility. Additionally, there are training sessions as well as an API certification program available for API-580 if you have a need/desire to fully understand the Risk-based Inspection methodology and requirements.

Actions to Take:
1) Does our plant have an RBI program? Is the RBI program meeting the expectations of you and your facility?
2) Consider that you or one of your employees present an overview of the API-580 document or review a section of the document during a weekly meeting.
3) Are the API standards available to you? If not, discuss with your supervisor.
4) Consider attending an API event or training.

Category: Risk Based Inspection- RBI

Corrosion- Do you know where to look?

API Standards- Risk-based Inspection (API-580) Overview