Baker Engineering and Risk Consultants (United States)

This report describes and documents the feasibility of constructing and maintaining a leak detection facility at various testing facilities currently in operation. It also documents the industry's current leak detection capabilities, as well as gaps in the current test facilities' abilities. These gaps include testing the existing leak detection technologies in manners consistent with analyzing real-world hydrocarbon pipeline leaks. This report also identifies important potential limiting factors in the facilities' designs and or/operations.

Pre-Engineered Metal Building (PEMB) manufacturers often lap the ends of cold-formed girts and purlins over columns and girders to increase their flexural resistance and stiffness with the goal of minimizing material costs. The 2017 edition of the American Iron and Steel Institute Cold-Formed Steel Design Manual provides assumptions for the static conventional design of cold-formed girts/purlins that are considered good practice assumptions. These assumptions are that lapped girts/purlins achieve full continuity, gross moments of inertia are summed within the lapped portions, and strengths within the lapped portions are the sum of the individual members. These good practice assumptions indicate there should also be an increase in blast capacity for secondary members with lapped ends, which is not discussed in industry blast documents. Blast design methodologies that were established by blast testing indicate that cold-formed beams typically do not maintain ultimate moment capacity at deflections greater than yield because of local compression buckling; however, typical connections and in-plane restraints allow for a limited amount of tension membrane that can develop to offset the loss of strength associated with local buckling. A parametric finite element model is utilized to study the sensitivity of cold-formed girt and purlin blast response to lap splice lengths, boundary conditions, blast loading regime, plastic deformations, and end connection conditions. Observations of member cross-sectional flexural resistance (i.e., local buckling) and the contribution of typical end connections to tension membrane resistance are presented. The results of the parametric finite element models are relied on to propose a revised single-degree-of-freedom (SDOF) blast methodology for cold-formed girts and purlins in PEMBs.

Abstract Process safety practices and management systems have been in place for many years and have been widely credited for reductions in major accident risk. However, many organizations today are challenged by inadequate management system performance, resource pressures, and stagnant or declining process safety performance. Systems for managing process safety have not been fully successful in some organizations due to a variety of issues; major, frequent contributors include a lack of senior management commitment and poor safety culture. Senior management commitment and safety culture are inextricably linked, as the quality of an organization's leadership and their commitment will drive or limit the culture. Changes to improve management systems are relatively easy to implement, but extremely difficult to sustain without strong leadership commitment and total line management support. It is not just a case of changing the systems, but also changing the safety culture of the organization. Safety culture tends to be the result of everything that happened or failed to happen and represents the organization's shared values, beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors with respect to safety (occupational safety and process safety). To change the safety culture and sustain the change, leadership must care and explicitly show that they care all of the time. Only then can an organization begin to improve its culture. The first step for any organization is identifying and understanding their existing culture. This paper will present the essential features of a sound safety culture and a methodology for identifying safety culture weaknesses based upon a culture, leadership, and accountability (CLA) review protocol used at different levels of the organization. Other key steps involved in changing and sustaining an improved safety culture will also be addressed.

We examine the ways in which political realities shape industrial policy through the lens of modern political economy. We consider two broad "governance constraints": i) the political forces that shape how industrial policy is chosen and ii) the ways in which state capacity affects implementation. The framework of modern political economy suggests that government failure is not a necessary feature of industrial policy; rather, it is more likely to emerge when countries pursue industrial policies beyond their governance capacity constraints. As such, our political economy of industrial policy is not fatalist. Instead, it enables policymakers to constructively confront challenges.

In industrial processing facilities, power distribution equipment is typically housed in dedicated prefabricated enclosures, which are strategically laid out in the plant to distribute power to processing units. These enclosures can contain low voltage or medium voltage switchgear, motor control centers, battery systems for backup DC power, and other control and monitoring equipment. Although these enclosures are not typically occupied by personnel during plant operations, they play a key function in controlling processes, even in critical or emergency situations. Due to their critical function in controlling processes inside the plant, this paper recommends these enclosures be risk assessed to determine if they should be designed to reduce the impact that accidental fires or explosions could have on the enclosed equipment. This paper discusses existing industry practices and technical literature that covers the blast and fire design of electrical enclosures. It further discusses a real vapor cloud explosion accident (Texas City, 2005) [10] that caused unintentional blast loading on a power distribution building.

Background:National and international recommendations for the prevention of surgical site infection (SSI) were published six years ago, but little is known about implementation in colon surgeries.Methods:We conducted an observational study to evaluate the implementation of seven SSI-prevention elements in colon surgeries. Study coordinators recorded the implementation using an electronic case report. Surgeons completed a survey that identified key drivers of implementation. Three peer-to-peer calls and a study coordinator survey provided insights on the obstacles and drivers to implementation.Results:The elements ranged in compliance from 100% to below 1%. Absence of documentation in the electronic medical record (EMR), conflicting local policies, and a lack of standardization of processes and products were significant obstacles in implementation.Discussion:Standardizing peri-operative procedures may be accomplished by implementing guidelines. Using implementation science to reduce variability and stocking leads to product standardization with items that support evidence-based practices. Administration, material management, and surgical leadership all have a duty to the patient to reduce obstacles to implement evidence-based practices.Conclusions:Our study reveals variability in in the integration of published guidelines into clinical practice. Every surgical patient deserves the best possible care by using evidence-based guidelines and practices centered on reducing SSIs.

Abstract These articles explain the background of lithium‐ion battery systems, key issues concerning the types of failure, and some guidance on how to identify the cause(s) of the failures. It also provides an overview of the series and some further comments on risks, mitigations, escalation, and insurance aspects.