Technical audit

Technical audit is one of the ways to improve industrial safety at hazardous production facilities.

Often, information on the state of industrial and fire safety, the actual technical state of equipment and engineering services available to enterprises, scattered, incomplete or not reliable, difficult to access do not give a complete picture of the safety of the production during its assessment.

This problem is particularly relevant for installations in operation for over 30 years, equipment of which physically and morally obsolete and technical solutions do not meet the current level of development of science and technology, regulations and rules of industrial safety.

To obtain objective information about these objects according to modern requirements, as well as the organization of supervision, operation, maintenance and repair business leaders concerned are beginning to attract independent professionals and experts with experience in assessing the compliance of design and operational documentation, the current technical state of equipment, structures of departments and technological installations.

The main purpose of the technical audit - collection, organization, analysis and complex assessment of information, the issuance of evaluation, recommendations and suggestions for bringing plants and installations of the enterprise to compliance with rules and regulations, as well as the identification of priority actions to prevent injuries and to achieve a safe and trouble-free operation of manufacturing.

Technical audit is conducted in two ways:

• in the field of construction
• in labor protection and safety

During the technical audit it is conducted:

• Expertise of initial permits, pre-related services, operational and technical documentation of the object of the enterprise and manufacturing
• Analysis and assessment of the object based on the results of technical studies, tests and measurements on site
• Preparation of a technical report on the completeness and quality of the initial permit, pre-related services, operational and technical documentation and technical state of the object, the enterprise, manufacturing
• Determination of compliance of initial permit, pre-related services, operational and technical documentation and technical state of the object with requirements of Ukrainian legislation, standards, norms, rules and regulations in the field of construction, industrial, fire and environmental safety and occupational health and safety.
• Preparing a list of missing documentation, including permitting, design, technical facilities necessary to meet the requirements of the applicable rules and regulations.

Under technical audit conformity assessment is based not only on the regulatory and technical standards, but also on research and best practices in operation of similar facilities.

According to the results of the audit, our specialists develop recommendations and algorithm for customer to follow in order to correct the identified inconsistencies and deviations from regulatory requirements, operating in Ukraine:

Analysis of the results of the technical audit of companies allows managers to make decisions on necessity, economic viability and priorities of the suggestions and recommendations offered by the auditors to improve the safety dangerous industrial objects.

Experience gained with the technical audit shows that the same problems are likely for different objects and enterprises:

• in many industries there are technical devices, which at the time of the technical audit exhausted their resources, often twice or three times, physically worn out and should be replaced immediately;
• there are cases of double overstatement of time between repairs of main and auxiliary equipment in process plants;
• lack of quality acceptance of hazardous production facilities in operation, as a result objects come with subquality and often simplified scheme;
• project documentation developed by factory design bureaus and departments often do not pass the expertise of industrial safety;
• a number of industries have no special drainage system designed for discharge of harmful substances 1st 2nd hazard classes;
• admitted uses of railway tanks as consumable stores of dangerous substances;
• enterprises for discharges of petroleum products still have opened emergency barns;
• capacity of the relief valves installed before 1982 on the vessels and devices is not intended to fire conditions;
• storage and loading of fuel oil (often watered above normal) into railway tanks are made at temperatures above 100 ° C (permissible temperature is not above 90 ° C), which makes it boil in the tank during filling and emissions on the surface of loading racks;
• commodity and intermediate storage of crude oil and petroleum products do not comply with technological regulations.

Among the most "problematic" technical devices can be identified:

• pump units handling highly explosive environments and environments with corrosivity equipped gland seals;
• technological pipelines laid under the ground, which does not allow to evaluate their technical condition;
• morally and physically outdated facilities instrumentation based on pneumatic devices involved in monitoring and controlling process parameters, including systems PAZ without spare parts for their timely replacement with greater inertia in the development of control actions and to be replaced by modern electronic means;
• scope of the diagnostics equipment (pumps, compressors, tanks and process piping) are about 5% of the required amount.

During the technical audit of the object:

• Expert group members collect, analyze, interpret and record all the information as audit report. It is necessary to determine compliance or non-compliance with audit criteria listed above;
• If necessary, in consultation with the Customer further investigation is conducted, technical inspection and examination, test, measurement, etc.;
• Group of auditors and experts should consider all obtained data during the audit, document it  in the established order and make a technical report on the results of the regulatory technical audit;
• In the process of preparing a technical report on the results of the regulatory technical audit may be issued recommendations on elimination identified gaps in of initial permits, predesigned, designed, operational and technical documentation and technical violations of object state (Customer makes a decision on the list and the feasibility of a set of measures aimed at eliminating the identified gaps and violations).

The main result of regulatory and technical audit of initial permits, predesigned, designed, operational and technical documentation and technical state of the object is a technical report, accepted by the customer.

Directions of realization of the audit results:

• development of action plans for refine and improve of initial permits, predesigned, designed, and operational permits and technical state of facilities, enterprises and industries;
• presentation of the technical report to confirm compliance with of initial permits, predesigned, designed, and operational permits and technical state of facilities, enterprises and industries with Ukrainian legislation, standards, norms, rules and regulations in the field of construction, industrial, fire and environmental safety and labor protection;
• coordination of the technical report on the results of the regulatory technical audit with investors to justify the investment attractiveness of the project and confirm its feasibility.