RPCM Reinforces Process Safety with Digital Permit to Work System

The petrochemical industry exposes workers to hazards such as toxic chemical products, obnoxious gas fumes, dust, and volatile organic compounds. It is imperative that the intrinsic safety of a petrochemical plant is tackled with continuous and systematic safety management systems that proactively identify hazards and analyze risks.

During the evaluation, the stakeholders necessitated computerization of the permit process as it would provide visualization of the processes and prove a valuable time-saving tool. Given the substantial importance of OHS in this industry, initiatives to automate the PTW process made complete sense. After extensive discussions with its personnel, RPCM corresponded with TECH EHS online and shared its work permits.

Now, the manufacturing of Purified Terephthalic Acid (PTA) comprises hazard-laden tasks such as

Also, as the end-product (PTA) is highly toxic, and has flammable properties, storage and warehouse needs systematic supervision of all routine activities.

Thus, the system needed to be accessible to users and reduce opportunities for mistakes, resulting in efficient permit processing.

As on-site health and safety requirements seemed to increase exponentially in RPCM due to challenges in managing work permits, TECH EHS and its system guided the users step-by-step in an A, B, and C fashion from start to end of the permit’s life. A mutual agreement on building a prototype of e-PTW facilitated a detailed analysis of the software at the user end.

Once the prototype was ready, TECH EHS professionals planned a 2-day site visit at Reliance Petrochemicals, Malaysia. The newly developed prototype put forth certain queries, and the discussions involved numerous manual interventions. These consisted of permit issuers, permit requesters, departmental heads, and concerned individuals from the control rooms.

After receiving elaborate considerations from more than 30 professionals from Reliance

Petrochemicals, TECH EHS, customized the software according to the agreed-upon prototype and delivered it on the User Acceptance Testing (UAT) server.

The e-PTW software developed to automate the PTW process was validated and qualified by engineers using pre-defined test procedures. Within a month, implementation began, and the software was rolled out to the instrumentation department first and then implemented in others, now running full-fledged in the organization.

RPCM’s PTW hierarchy was elaborate and comprehensive, as it consisted of many stakeholders in the whole process. Many authorities were responsible for their step-by-step process to enable complete awareness of the work carried out across all the significant areas. In addition to full visibility and a glance at the status of the existing permits, the software enabled automatic flagging for risk assessments, expired permits, and permits that were awaiting approvals.