CIA2005: Asia needs to buck up on safety & risk management standards
Posted: 23 November 2005
Safety expert says Asia needs to bring industrial safety standards up to the international mark to ensure a safer work environment and less polluted world
Asia, as a whole, lags behind in adopting work safety standards for industrial plants, says David Ong, Managing Director of safety consultancy and automation specialist, Excel Marco Industrial Systems.
Comparing how the West and Asia prioritise safety issues differently, Mr Ong commented that in Asia, where many countries are driven, by and large, by overbearing economic growth, the emphasis has been very different, thus, leading to higher industrial risks as well as environmental degradation.
While there are no collaborative figures on safety lapses and industrial accidents in Asia because of different levels of transparency in reporting, the safety standard lag is probably due to a more conservative management style.
The high number of coal mining deaths in China as well as the recent fire on India’s offshore oil platform, the Bombay High, are only some incidents that made it to the news because of their dramatic nature. The more frequent but much smaller industrial accidents are seldom reported, hence the lack of statistics in this area.
The three priorities that drive safety implementation are to protect people, the environment and business assets, according to Mr Ong. In the West, says Mr Ong, the driving factor has always been protecting people first, then the environment and assets. In Alaska, for instance, the planned opening of the pristine wilderness to oil drilling and refining has been met with fierce resistance by concerned groups.
But with globalisation and Asian countries joining the world economy, there is no turning back the clock. International safety standards, in particular, the established IEC61508 and IEC 61511, have to be implemented to ensure a safer work environment and a less polluted world.
Mr Ong is a certified functional safety expert, with more than 18 years industrial experience, doing Process Automation Safety & Control projects for companies such as ExxonMobil, Shell, Sinopec, PetroChina and Total. He will introduce the key aspects of these two IEC standards and their requirements in process control at the CIA2005 International Conference, from 30 November to 2 December at Suntec Singapore.
When some companies expand their production facilities, some do not apply the same rigorous levels of safety as they did during the initial construction of the plant, says Mr Ong. “You can’t simply buy an off-the-shelf product and install into new facilities, and consider that you have done your duty as far as safety is concerned,” he adds.
There is no such thing as a completely risk-free and safe industrial plant or facility, says Mr Ong. Management can reduce this risk level, for instance, the likelihood of failure of individual components within the safety control system in fire and gas detection, and the phased, orderly shutdown of the process in the event of, say, a gas leak or fire outbreak.
“To measure and implement safety measures of any sort, you need to know how much risk there is in a particular process,” he says. “Safety measures are designed to reduce such risk to a tolerable level.”
Themes at the conference include safety and risk-reduction management in both the design and operational aspects of process control, industrial networking and communication, productivity and asset management, field devices for sensing and measurement, as well as automation and control strategies.
Apart from Mr Ong, some of the speakers are the President of ICS and Deputy Managing Director of Cegelec Singapore, Kang Thian Jian, who delivers the opening address, and Dave Appleton, Director of technology at Calistra Research Labs, and Mr Sng Hee Meng, Executive VP of Yokogawa Engineering Asia.
Deputy Director of Science and Engineering Research Council at A*STAR, Dr Lim Khiang Wee, the keynote speaker at the CIA International Conference, will elaborate on the need for companies themselves to spot trends in global shifts in automation and to keep up with them, so as to better prioritise their own R&D accordingly.
The CIA2005 International Conference is held every two years in conjunction with CIA2005 exhibition, short for ChemAsia, InstrumentAsia and AnaLabAsia, which is the region’s main exhibition on plant and process engineering, instrumentation and analytical technology. This year’s conference provides valuable insights by industry and academic experts on innovations, trends and key developments.
The EnvironmexAsia and WatermexAsia2005 exhibition, which will present the latest environmental technologies, will be held alongside the CIA International Conference and exhibition at the same dates and venue.
For more information on CIA2005, please go to www.cia-asia.com
Posted by Richard Price, Editor, EnergyME.com
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