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COMAH Reports
The HSE introduced the Control of Major Accident Hazards (COMAH) Regulations in 1999, they replace the previous CIMAH regulations. COMAH applies mainly to the chemical industry, but also to some storage activities, explosives and nuclear sites, and other industries where threshold quantities of dangerous substances identified in the Regulations are kept or used. Their main aim is to prevent and mitigate the effects of those major accidents involving dangerous substances, such as chlorine, liquefied petroleum gas, explosives and arsenic pentoxide which can cause serious damage/harm to people and/or the environment. The COMAH Regulations treat risks to the environment as seriously as those to people. Top Tier operators are required to prepare a Safety Report.
The Safety Report must include: a policy on how to prevent and mitigate major accidents; a management system for implementing that policy; an effective method for identifying any major accidents that might occur; measures (such as safe plant and safe operating procedures) to prevent and mitigate major accidents; information on the safety precautions built into the plant and equipment when it was designed and constructed; details of measures (such as fire-fighting, relief systems and filters) to limit the consequences of any major accident that might occur; and information about the emergency plan for the site, which is also used by the local authority in drawing up an off-site emergency plan.
The arc approach to COMAH
ARC offers flexible assistance to operators developing COMAH Safety Reports. Assistance offered includes all qualitative and quantitative services necessary for COMAH Safety Report production: Preparation of Major Accident Prevention Policy (MAPP), Development and demonstration of Safety and Environment Management Systems, Quantitative and qualitative risk assessment and preparation of emergency plans.
ARCs consultants have a wide range of industry experience in; identifying critical safety and environmental mechanisms, identifying measures that provide mitigation, the use state of the art software to conduct the fire, explosion and toxicity consequence analysis. Results from the consequence analysis are extracted and used as input for the Predictive Risk Assessment and Environmental Consequence Assessment. ARC’s expertise extents to the implementation of Process Hazard Identification and Review (PHIR) process used to identify the Major Accident Hazards (MAHs) for formation of the representative set.
Experience
Our experience includes the following projects:
Assistance in the preparation of a COMAH report for BASF Seal Sands
Assistance in the preparation of a COMAH report for Total E&P UK St Fergus Gas Plant
Assistance in the preparation of a COMAH report for Diosynth UK Ltd
Occupied Building Study for a Polyethylene and Propylene Plant |
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