Birth of an Industry Standard

T

he aging of petroleum and chemical facilities has become a critical safety concern. Specifically, during the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, previous state-of-the-art facilities had begun to stress mechanically, resulting in catastrophic events causing severe injuries, property damage, even fatalities. Since then, the drive for protection of workers has gained unstoppable momentum…and HUNTER Buildings has been at its very forefront.

In 1992, OSHA put into effect a standard called “Process Safety Management of Highly Hazardous Chemicals,” with the expressed intent of reducing the number of hazardous incidents at these facilities. As an appendix to the rule, they also produced a compliance guide. Most significant was its specific discouragement of the use of portable buildings within the process areas of plants.

Moved by OSHA’s stance, the American Petroleum Institute (API) and the Chemical Manufacturer’s Association (CMA) jointly developed their own guidelines to address these issues. In 1995, API and CMA issued API Recommended Practice 752 (API RP 752), which focuses on the location of buildings as well as safety practices. It identifies several types of buildings commonly found in process settings and provides a means of assessing risk to building occupants when exposed to various levels of “overpressure” resulting from an explosion. Further, it recommends either the modification of these buildings or their complete replacement with “a new building using explosion resistant design.”

Over time, it became clear that API RP 752 needed to specifically detail how buildings should be located in relation to process areas and which types of buildings would be allowed within a given radius. In June of 2007, API RP 753 was published, defining three concentric “zones” which encircle any potential blast area. It also provides a simple chart which defines the types of buildings allowed in each zone and offers a method for defining these zones to determine which building best meets the safety need.

Until the conception of HUNTER Buildings, the typical blast mitigation was simply to move all of the buildings (mostly wood frame) away from the process area. In reality, however, it was simply impractical in that it placed workers too far from their stations. HUNTER Buildings took aggressive steps toward a solution by enlisting the support of ExxonMobil, along with the industry-leading blast specialists at ABS Consulting, and proposing a building specificationn that would meet their needs for blast protection. In cooperation with a multi-disciplined team from ExxonMobil, all structural, electrical, plumbing, communication and other systems were thoroughly evaluated and designed for not only blast protection but also blast prevention through the use of sealed and non-sparking electrical components. In addition, measures were taken to insure that, should a hazardous vapor cloud reach the building, occupant risk could be minimized through the use of automatic damper systems.

Once they were satisfied with the specifications and our ability to produce, ExxonMobil established a mandate banning the use of wood-frame buildings and requiring the use of blast-resistant buildings, and the HUNTER Buildings standard was born.

Home  About Us  Buildings  Clients  Contact Us  Sitemap

Copyright 2007 - Hunter Buildings - All Rights Reserved