Critical Analysis: Piper Alpha
Introduction:
The Piper Alpha, was an offshore oil production platform that was located in the British sector of the North Sea. It was operated by the Occidental Petroleum Caledonia Ltd. Piper Alpha at the time accounted for approximately ten percent for all gas and oil that was produced from the North Sea (Konard, 2011). Initially Piper Alpha started as an oil platform but later on it was converted to gas production. On the 6th of July 1988, a catastrophic explosion killed 167 men and incinerating the platform causing a damage bill in excess of 3.4 billion U.S dollar. Piper Alpha is the greatest engineering disaster to date. It represent everything that can go wrong due to maintenance errors, causing the worst possible outcome, the loss of many human lives. However, it is essential to understand Piper Alpha disaster was not caused by a singular problem or person, but rather many causes that worked together to create the disaster.
The three main causes, which are not exclusives:
1- Safety Valves maintenance
2- The Firewalls used to construct the four Piper Alpha modules.
3- The rubber matting used by the divers blocked the grating from allowing leaked oil to pass through to the sea.
This analysis is going to focus on the maintenance failures and ignore the rest. It is commendable to note that nothing can be said with absolute certainty because the fire left little for the investigators. The analysis is grounded on few pieces of evidence that were found after two years of investigation. The investigation team was led by Lord Cullen and his report on the incident was published in 1990, it is referred to as the “Cullen Report” or “The public inquiry into the Piper Alpha disaster”.
Summary of the Saf...
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...gement team should require the head of maintenance approval.
The filing system flaws were only part of the problem. The other part was the safety procedure conducted by the maintenance team. If the pipe was secured no leak would have happened and therefore the first explosion would have at least been minimised and contained.
The maintenance team should have done the following:
- Follow all safety requirements.
- Annual remainder of all safety requirements through yearly training.
- Maintenance should be conducted in pairs at least even if the task require only one person.
- Maintenance review by the maintenance manager for all tasks.
- Operation tests on short interval should be conducted after every single maintenance to confirm it is safe to operate.
- All maintenance tasks need to be isolated to avoid system operation while there is ongoing maintenance.
On the fateful and unforgettable afternoon of June 17, 1972 Hotel Vendome experienced yet another fire. Actually it experienced several fires in different locations on this date. Electricians working on the first floor reported smoke coming from the upper floors, and a bartender reported smoke in the basement. All occupants in the basement café were safely escorted out, and 3 engine companies, 2 ladder companies, and 1 District Chief arrived on scene noticing ...
Preventive Maintenance Checks and Services (PMCS) means systematic caring, inspecting, and servicing of military equipment to keep it in good condition and to prevent breakdowns. The operator of the vehicle mission is to be sure to perform PMCS each time he/she operate the vehicle. Always do the PMCS in the same order, so it gets to be a habit. Once you've had some practice, you will quickly spot anything wrong.
This turned out to be a serious safety hazard with the expected loss of life. But they labelled it as an Acceptable risk, instead of finding a solution.
One is not having any lights in the building stairway. That caused a pileup of people and stuck in the dark. The main one is not having any fire extinguishers in the building.if they had one in the room, the could have put out the fire before it spread killing many lives. The exit ladder was not strong enough to support the weight of the workers causing it to break. That left people standing on the 6th floor not knowing what to do. Some people jumped. The impact was still hard enough to kill them. The main problem was the standpipe. The standpipe had not been connected to the sprinklers which left the fire to continue
The analysis in this report will include a summary of the sequence of events leading up to the disaster, analysis of the professional ethical behaviours and responsibilities that were compromised, and finally the lessons learned and recommendations to avoid such future disasters.
When complicated systems fail catastrophically, there are processes that aim to fulfill three general objectives. One, is to assign blame, another, to understand what happened and what why it happened. Last, is to fix the specific feature or problem so that disaster will not happen again. In the article “Blowup” published in 1996 by The New Yorker, author Malcolm Gladwell examines catastrophes such as the Challenger explosion, and the near-disaster at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant. He begins by defining the “rituals of disaster,” [1] a modern process in which physical evidence is collected and scrupulously analyzed to form a conclusion, and further explores the sociological aspects surrounding disasters, tying them to the human
...pectors had determined that the reason on which the fire had rapidly spread was due to many structural and design flaws. Wires not being grounded correctly, a fire alarm that never rung or let out a peep. The stairwell which was a critical escape path overwhelmed by smoke. Other defects located in the air conditioning systems, all which helped the smoke spread. Despite of 83 building code violations, no one was ever punished for the lives that were lost. Later, the Hotel was being rebuilt, and the fire marshal had issued for the hotel to pay 192000$ to install sprinklers in the casino room; the clark county building official had rejected for the fire marshal’s charge. Authorities then had said that the automatic sprinkler systems were better off installed in the first place, as they could have prevented the loss many lives and the disaster at the hotel. Even after
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Keeping the entire instrument clean and properly storing the device are also important in terms of maintenance.
After the accident, a full-scale investigation was launched by the United States National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB). It concluded that the accident was caused by metal fatigue exacerbated by crevice corrosion, the corrosion is exacerbated by the salt water and the age of the aircraft was already 19 years old as the plane operated in a salt water environment.
Throughout recorded history, fires have been known to cause great loss of life, property, and knowledge. The Great Fire of London was easily one of the worst fires mankind has ever seen causing large scale destruction and terror. Samuel Pepys described the fire as “A most malicious bloody flame, as one entire arch of fire of above a mile long… the churches, houses and all on fire and flaming at once, and a horrid noise the flames made.” (Britain Express 1).
One of the worst cases of catastrophic event in history is the Bhopal Union Carbide case.
“The first explosions were heard on this Island in the evening of 5 April, they were noticed in every quarter, and continued at intervals until the following day. The noise was, in the first instance, almost universally attribut...
The training facility that Giffels firm was contracted to do civil engineering work for had recently switched from using jet fuel to liquid propane to prevent soil contamination. While this was a solution to environmental concerns it created new problems that Giffels found to be unaddressed with the lack of a design analysis for any safety systems.
As the development of aviation industry grows, more and more aircraft crashes occur. There are many reasons that lead to aircraft crashes, but one of them, is because of improper aircraft maintenance. Why is proper aircraft maintenance so important? Proper aircraft maintenance is critical in order to keep the aircraft can function properly, every aircraft part is in good condition and ensure the safety of pilots and passengers. Proper maintenance has many parts. The most common part is inspections, which pilots do them every day; the main part is overhaul and repair of an aircraft; and maintenance documentation is another important part of aircraft maintenance which improper maintenance documentation has caused many incidents.