P 96 Post JERP

P  96

Post JERP

All the statutory authorities accepted BIS Codes as the standard norms, which had a good amount of reasoning and logic to arrive at the fire water pumping capacity requirement for a large complex having several plants.

The current  law stipulates that in a complex catered by a fire water network, the pumping capacity requirement should be arrived at by considering two largest simultaneous demand plot areas @1 lpm /M2 with 50%standby pumping requirement  and the remnant pressure at the remotest area in that network should be at least 7 kg/cm2 g. For plot area measurement, the fire break condition of at least 15 M apply.

At that time in 2010, that gave me a big relief.Discussed that idea with Dilip Koimattur , TechnoFire director&ex-TAC officer and he concurred that idea instantly.Immediately I shared the same with M/S Kiran Shinde and Kirit Brahmabhatt. Both of them okay ed the same as long as the concerned statutory authority approve. That ensured that South plot of the main refinery beyond 9th street Southwards in DTA plot shall be serviced with fire water from original DTA fire water pump house 713. Immediately I asked M/S Bechtel/MEC / and TechnoFire to carry out the initial check of hydraulics assuming the network periphery will be of 42" diameter. To our good fortune, it was coming to about 8-8.2 Kg/cm2 g which relieved us completely. There I have to specifically mention the important contribution of Mr Anthony Mankodi of MEC. He suggested that the linear length of parallel headers from existing pump house to DTA Gasification Complex B/L being about 4 Kms each long, it is better to make provision for cross breeders in the underground headers going to gasification complex B/L. That idea was welcomed by one and all and implemented.

As the J3 project execution start was getting delayed, sometime in August 2010, SM asked me to carry out an audit of the Fire Prevention System of all Reliance manufacturing locations excepting Jamnagar. For carrying out that audit, I formed a core team  of members drawn from OSBL project group for fire water system/network and core instrumentation manpower for Fire&Gas system.
The OSBL team led by M/S Sriram and Madhu Narayanan took care of auditing existing fire water pumping, overall network both in offsite as well as respective plant ISBL, quantity of throw and reach of the hydrants and monitors all across. I personally looked into the respective plant /complex original design basis and available hydraulic analysis calculations of complex network.

The instrument team led by Mr.Upendra Joshi  took care of auditing Fire&Gas system as well as the deluge arrangement & the fire water pump start sequence logic etc.
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Key Aspects :-   Accountable, Codes& Standard, Conviction, Incident analysis,  Team building, Transfer

P 95 Post JERP

P  95

Post JERP

Having completed JERP in March 2009,all the project manpower were engaged in Project close out report &record the lessons learnt exercise.One of the important aspect that came out was'model build-up inter-discipline checks quality lacking,which resulted in good amount of clash during field execution' & absence of underground engineering(C 84) modelling.

During that period , in late 2009. SM instructed me to look into the possibility of developing & creating an exclusive HSE engineering department in projects.He specifically guided me to take inputs from Bechtel team- M/S Vi Patel/Steve Wiggins, who were fully involved in the infrastructure build up &overall O&U project execution of JERP. That task undertaking has changed my career direction.

More or less that was the time , J3 projects identification tasks were on. I along with  Yanamandra  were working out the overall OSBL  requirement for the new upcoming projects. During that phase, in early 2010, a bright idea struck me  regarding utilization of DTA refinery fire water pumping capacity for the plants that come south of the old refinery in the available land up to Kanalus railway siding.

Here it calls for some explanation about the back ground. When we executed the original DTA refinery in second half of '90 s, for the fire water system approval,TAC, a statutory body under insurance were the controlling authority. They had a peculiar requirement for arriving at the overall fire water pumping requirement for an industrial complex. Irrespective of number of plants  and well laid plant layout with large inter-distances, it called for fire water pumping capacity equivalent to the required rate for the sum of equivalent hydrants all across complex, not considering any logic or analysis. It was purely an arithmetic calculation and we ended up in putting 16 X 1000 M3 /Hr pumping ! Rather that situation was sarcastically criticized by international re-insurers as well as by Shell Global Solutions, who assist Reliance in reviewing all safety matters.

The curse may be that , in those times, no authority in power would have envisaged such a large complicated industrial complex coming up in India. That forced us to go for 16 X 1000 M3/Hr fire water pumping capacity catering to all plants in DTA refinery. Tank farm had its own dedicated pumping system with pond.  As luck would have it, during the execution of JERP, in 2008 TAC got wound up and this responsibility has been shifted to PESO/OISD ( though not a statutory body but a society formulated by Petroleum ministry).
                                                                                                          Contd......

KeyAspects :-  Faith, Incident analysis, Initiative, Recognition, Responsible, Technical issue, Transfer