ENGINEERING & Risk Management

The MPAC Group is a multi-disciplinary and technical solutions service provider providing services in the Industrial, Marine, On and Offshore Oil & Gas, Mining and Energy sectors.

Our Engineering and Risk management consulting services can be applied to your operations entire life cycle from design to decommissioning, helping you to minimize risk and minimize the overall project cost by developing cost effective assets, enhancing asset integrity and optimizing the system, field, asset and facility performance.

We provide an integrated service that incorporates design, completions, drilling performance, new technology, applications, multi-disciplined studies, engineering assessment, detailed design and drafting, risk management and project management.

IMPAC provides complete project management services to all sectors of the engineering industry. We have highly skilled personnel in project management, engineering management, quality management and construction management.

Our Project Management Services include -

·     Scope definition

·     Project execution plan

·     Project cost estimating

·     Scheduling

·     Project controls

·     Contract and procurement strategies

·     Risk management

·     Quality assurance and quality control

·     Construction management

 

IMPAC ENGINEERING & DETAILED DESIGN SERVICES

The scope of IMPAC Engineering and Detailed Design services includes establishment of complete turnkey project package inclusive of engineering, detailed design and drafting, completion of tender packages, tender evaluations, procurement and expediting, fabrication/modularization, onsite constriction, resource management along with commissioning and operations handover.

ENGINEERING

IMPAC offers a complete range of Civil, Structural and Mechanical services for the Oil & Gas, Mining and Energy sectors of industry.

Our engineers utilize the latest design tools to develop 3D models and 2D drawings resulting in cost effective design solutions for Civil, Structural and Mechanical packages.

IMPAC has extensive experience in the development of Process Flow and, Process and Instrumentation Diagrams through to the establishment of vessel and piping drawing packages and General Arrangement layouts.

IMPAC Engineering and design offices can receive client’s concept designs and complete detailed design and produce 2D detailed drawings from your designs. Generally IMPAC receives the clients 3D Model(s) and from this model(s) completes detailed drawings such as Structural Steel and connection detailing, Pipe Isometrics, Pressure Vessels, Civil Structures such as foundations storm water and pits. These drawings will be grouped into relevant discipline packages such as Civil, Structural, Piping Mechanical and Electrical.

Engineering Software

IMPAC Engineers utilizes engineering software such as,

  • CADWORX
  • PVELITE
  • CEASER II
  • AUTOCAD

 

Risk Management is the process of evaluating, prioritizing and managing the resources to the most rewarding areas to secure safety of your people, asset, environment, and/or reputation. Risk is inherent in any system and there is risk related to any activity managed by people, and it is important to be aware of this risk and deal with it. All efforts to prevent accidents and unwanted incidents from taking place are about managing risk. The risk analysis process is a central part of the risk management, and has three key basic independent elements:

  1. Planning
  2. Risk Assessment (execution)
  3. Risk Treatment (use)
What we do

Within Risk Management we help our customers identify and control their risks by facilitating workshops using established risk analysis approach such as HAZID (Hazard Identification), HAZOP (Hazard and Operability) / FMECA (Failure Modes and Effects and Criticality Analysis). We also provide different sorts of risk analyses such as QRA (Quantitative Risk Assessment), engineering root cause analysis (RCA/RCFA) and dynamic simulation. Further we identify safety critical elements and write corresponding performance standards against which the performance of the safety critical elements later can be verified.  

What you get
  • Identify and evaluate possible hazardous risk events
  • Identify and assesses major accident hazards
  • Evaluation of system reliability in design phase
  • Identify critical aspects of design phase as well as failed components or equipment’s
  • Identify root causes of production deferrals and material failures
  • Compliance to requirements by authorities, partners, insurance companies
  • Recommendations regarding uncertainty and manageability factors in the total risk picture
  • Establish better risk management process by evaluating sensitivity and robustness analyses
  • Reviewing the design of process plants for a safe, more effective and reliable plant or asset
  • Give recommendations for further improvements as part of partial support for Acknowledgement of Compliance (AoC)
  • Identify and control risks to achieve safe and reliable operation while protecting your people, asset, environment and reputation
How can we help you?

Whether you are in the process of designing a system, making a modification or planning a complicated operation such as commissioning or replacement or heavy lift, improving safety and reliability performance starts by identifying all the risks that your operation is exposed and then manage these risks by introducing suitable mitigating measures.

IMPAC can help in this process by applying standard processes for identifying and assessing risks. Our methods also evaluate the total risk picture, including sensitivity and robustness analyses for better understanding of your risk management process.

Identify and control risks to achieve safe and reliable operation while protecting your people, asset, environment and reputation.

HAZID (HAZARD Identification) and HAZOP (HAZARD and Operability) is a systematic approach to review design and operation of potentially hazardous facilities and operations.

Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA) and FMECA (Failure Modes and Effects and Criticality Analysis) is a structured, bottom-up approach to identify potential failures, evaluate their effects, and identify actions to eliminate or reduce risk.

The purpose of our HAZID and HAZOP facilitation is to identify the potential hazards and operability constraints associated with an operation/facility and FMEA/FMECA facilitation is to identify single component failures (which lead to functional failures), causes and consequences. All these services shall define actions necessary to close gaps among various parties involved.

What we do

Within Risk Management we help our customers identify and control their risks by facilitating workshops using established risk analysis approach such as HAZID, HAZOP and FMEA/FMECA. For a HAZID/HAZOP session, we also issue minutes of the discussions in an agreed format and these minutes shall be agreed by everyone in that workshop or session. In an FMECA, each equipment is analysed in details and components with redundancies or common cause failures are not accounted in the analysis. However, we provide recommendations that redundancy and robust system design are potential safeguards for the failure modes considered in the FMECA where applicable. Further our experienced personnel or certified assessor can issue a report for FMECA after the workshop.

What you get
  • Identify and evaluate possible hazardous events
  • Identify and assesses major accident hazards
  • Compliance to requirements by authorities, partners, insurance companies
  • Evaluation of system reliability in design phase
  • Identify critical aspects of design phase
  • Reviewing the design of process plants for a safe, more effective and reliable plant
How can we help you?

Whether you are in the process of designing a system, making a modification or planning a complicated operation such as commissioning or replacement or heavy lift, improving safety and reliability performance starts by identifying all the risks that your operation is exposed and then manage these risks by introducing suitable mitigating measures.

IMPAC can help in this process by applying standard processes for identifying and assessing risks. Our methods include facilitating a HAZID (is much quicker and less resource intensive study) and HAZOP workshop which brings together the right personal to identify the potential hazards and operability constraints for a new process or design that may exist in a particular design.

At the component level, we can also help you to facilitate FMEA and/or FMECA (Deign or Process FMECA) to identify potential failures, causes and consequences of targeted components and assess the resulting effects on the rest of the system. This process will help you to remove failure modes, reduce the probability of consequences of failure modes to acceptable levels (ALARP).

Identify the root causes that lead to the production loss, and material failures.

Do we learn from own mistake? After catastrophes and large near accidents, the petroleum industry should strive to avoid repeating the same mistakes. However, the same type of incidents happened again and again. It is vital to learn from the mistakes from others. You cannot live long enough to make them all yourself (Eleanor Roosevelt). ISO 9001:2008 also stress the importance of requirements for improvement such as determining the causes of nonconformities (corrective actions) and determining the potential nonconformities and their causes (preventive actions). In the current and future, the need for RCA is more urgent than ever before to protect your asset, people, environment and reputation.

RCA (Root Cause Analysis) and RCFA (Root Cause and Failure Analysis) is fully understandable a process or system and correcting the root causes that lead to events having an impact on plant performance. The purpose of the RCA or RCFA study is to identify root cause for the failures of system and take actions on how to reduce it and improve it so next time prevent from happening again.

What we do

Our Incident Investigation or RCA services include:

  • Facilitating workshops or investigating incident/accident and production deferrals
  • Provide lab tests of failed equipment through our partner SWEREA
  • Reviewing lab test result for the failed equipment
  • Verifying relevant investigation reports made by suppliers of components or equipment’s
  • Issuing a report for RCA/RCFA by our experienced investigator after completing each investigation
What you get
  • Identify and evaluate possible root causes of failed components
  • Develop defect elimination table
  • Screen out any previous or current irrelevant speculation spreading over your failed components
  • Input to update maintenance management system including changes in maintenance strategy
  • Evaluation of contractors or supplier’s investigation reports
  • Identify critical aspects of production deferrals
How can we help you?

Whether you are in the process of designing a system, making a modification or planning a complicated operation such as commissioning or replacement or heavy lift, IMPAC can help you to develop defect elimination table and decide on suitable root cause technique to identify all the major and minor failures causes that your operation is exposed and then identify their root causes by introducing suitable investigative measures.

IMPAC can help you to facilitate or investigate RCA process either at your premises or directly hired out at your premises to support your on-going investigation process which brings together the right personal to identify the root causes of your production deferrals or failed equipment’s or components.

 

Your physical assets must perform reliably to ensure and Manage a safe and profitable operation.

Asset Integrity Management (AIM) is the means of ensuring the desired performance of an asset to perform its required function effectively and efficiently over the whole lifecycle of the asset. All aspects of operations need to be properly identified, designed, constructed, tested, operated, commissioned, inspected, and maintained to achieve safety and integrity of your assets while protecting health, safety and the environment.

What we do

Our Asset Integrity Management Services include auditing, developing or improving strategies, plans and procedures for inspection and maintenance. We do this through auditing against established integrity management standards such as ISO 55000 to help our customers close any gaps within their integrity management systems. Further we apply approaches such as RBI (Risk Based Inspection) and RCM (Reliability Centered Maintenance) to develop or improve maintenance and inspection plans.  We can also offer qualified inspectors to carry out and/or assess inspection results to update RBI results and determine fitness for service.

What you get
  • Minimise risks and maximise certainty – our support in maintaining and operating your physical assets reliably minimise risks and provide maximum certainty
  • Establish world class integrity management system – our expert teams involve in all aspects of operational safety and integrity phases to support your business achieving high integrity management system, and procedures
  • Inspection optimisation – our RBI experts develop or improve inspection strategies, and plans to gain highly technical integrity for both on-and off shore process equipment’s, pipelines, structures, and subsea equipment
  • Maintenance optimisation - our RCM approach help you to reduce downtime, establish maintenance strategy, and excellent spare parts inventory management of your assets
  • Cost savings – our AIM services are not only beneficial for your plant reliable operation but also significantly reduced costs
  • Unnecessary inspection treatment – our experts are proactive to reducing and eliminating unnecessary inspection activities and costs
  • Compliance with applicable authority and standards – we ensure your assets fulfil requirements with applicable authority and industry standards
How can we help you?

IMPAC experts believe that asset integrity management is about ensuring the necessary strategies, procedures, checklists, systems, competence and resources are in place to maintain integrity throughout the lifetime of your asset.

IMPAC can support you to develop, improve and implement an effective asset integrity management system for all types of installations that controls your costs and at the same time ensures you fulfill all necessary requirements from applicable authorities and standards.

Verification involves the activities required to confirm that the safety barriers of an installation or an asset are designed, constructed and maintained in a condition that is fit for purpose and can perform their function safely.

This is typically done through identification of all barriers or safety critical elements (SCE) of an installation and establishing performance standards or criteria for these SCE’s, with regards to functionality, availability and vulnerability. Once the standards are agreed upon, the independent verifier (or independent verification body – IVB) then describes how these are to be verified in a written verification scheme that describes how the verification is to be conducted.

What we do

Our Verification services include:

  • Identification and description of SCEs and performance standards
  • Development of written schemes of examination/verification
  • Verification of design according to selected standards and requirements
  • Verification of construction activities according to agreed requirements
  • Vendor inspections and verification of FAT/SAT
  • Verification of commissioning activities
  • Verification of installations in service according to the written verification schemes
  • Verification of modifications
  • Provide verification statements and communicate with applicable authorities on compliance issues
What you get
  • Transparent and recognized best practice approach for managing safety barriers on your installation
  • Independent statement of design, construction, commissioning and/or condition of safety barriers that can be shown to stakeholders such as authorities, insurance companies, owners/partners, employees, and corporate management
  • Efficiently help reducing (major accident) risk in your organizations
  • Verify or write which performance standards and/or barriers are missing at your operating assets and give recommendations for further improvements
  • Carry out vendor inspections to ensure quality of purchased equipment
How can we help you?

Using a verification scheme based on performance requirements for safety critical elements, IMPAC can verify that the design, construction and maintenance of the SCE meets the set criteria.

Based on the verification, IMPAC will issue a statement that describes the status – which can then be shown to applicable authorities to demonstrate compliance with regulations, international standards or recognized best practice.

The oil & gas industry is increasingly reliant upon instrumented safety system to achieve expected levels of safety. These are often subject to requirements as described by the international standards IEC 61508 / 61511. Without thorough experience these can however be challenging to follow and comply with.

IMPAC helps customers implement functional safety management practices in accordance to the requirements of IEC 61508/61511. This can be done either in the role as consultant in the development process of safety critical systems or as a third party to verify that required safety integrity level (SIL) is achieved. IMPAC also helps customers with the matters relating to functional safety, both as an independent third party and as an embedded member of the client’s project team. IMPAC Group of companies have expert resources based in Vietnam the APAC region and wider afield that are suitably competent to carry out functional safety management activities.

What we do

Our functional safety management service includes:

  • Identification and description of SCEs and performance standards
  • Training on IEC 61508/61511 requirements and Safety Integrity Levels
  • Functional Safety Assessment (FSA) of the safety instrumented systems
  • Safety integrity level (SIL) determination / classification
  • SIL verification of proposed design
  • Verification of SIL compliance of systems in operation
  • Safety Analysis Report (SAR) review
What you get
  • Compliance to standard requirements
  • Demonstrable reliability of safety systems
  • Reduced risk exposure

 

Whether you are in the process of designing a system, making a modification or planning a complicated operation such as commissioning or replacement or heavy lift, improving safety and reliability performance starts by identifying all the risks that your operation is exposed and then manage these risks by introducing suitable mitigating measures.

IMPAC can help in this process by applying standard processes for identifying and assessing risks.

What we do

Our risk and reliability analysis include:

  • Identification and description of SCEs and performance standards
  • Risk analysis training
  • Reliability analysis training
  • Quantitative Risk Assessment (QRA)
  • HAZID / HAZOP / HAZAN
  • FMEA /FMECA
  • Reliability and Vulnerability analysis
  • Root Cause analysis (RCA) / RCFA
What you get
  • Compliance to requirements by authorities, partners, insurance
  • companies
  • Identification of major challenges to safety and/or reliability
  • Reduced risk exposure

IMPAC adopts a risk-based approach to AIM.

When developing an RBI scheme for an asset, we adopt a two-stage approach. Initial risk is determined utilising a qualitative or semi-quantitative approach. High-risk items identified after this stage is then subjected to a quantitative risk assessment to refine the calculated risk. This approach offers a highly cost effective approach for the risk determination and inspection planning process.

Items with a high risk are given a higher priority for inspection while medium and low risk items are given a lower priority. This is achieved by relating the level of risk calculated to required inspection intervals.

RBI assists a company to select cost effective and appropriate maintenance and inspection tasks and techniques, to minimize efforts and cost, to shift from a reactive to a proactive maintenance regime, to produce an auditable system, to give an agreed “operating window”, and to implement a risk management tool.

The benefits of RBI include:

  • To provide a holistic, interdependent approach for managing risk
  • Identification of equipment operational risks through identification of their failure mechanisms.
  • To apply a strategy of doing what is needed for safeguarding integrity and improving reliability and availability of the asset by planning and executing those inspections that are needed
  • To reduce inspections and shutdowns and increase plant availability without compromising safety or reliability
  • To safeguard integrity and reduce the risk of failures
  • To provide a dynamic system that continuously improves and adapts to changing risks
  • To ensure inspection techniques and methods consider potential failure modes
  • To reduce inspections for low risk items allowing costs to be optimised more appropriately to high risk items.

 

IMPAC can offer a full range of structural re-assessment capabilities from design component approaches based on API RP2A to full non-linear approaches in accordance with API RP2SIM utilizing USFOS ultimate strength assessment software.

Our approach to re-assessment of jacket structures utilizes the latest techniques based on assessment of the jackets overall reliability based on reserve strength calculated from ultimate strength collapse analysis.

Adopting this approach eliminates the design approach requirement to justify utilisations of every single structural component of the jacket. Case studies performed have proven that structures that were deemed unfit for service using design approaches actually achieved required reliability levels, eliminating or greatly reducing expensive mitigation through subsea repair or strengthening.

The use of ultimate strength methods can also be used to demonstrate robustness required for the application of RBI approaches to inspection planning as well as identifying member criticality for life extension studies.

In addition to analysis for re-assessment, we can offer a full structural analysis capability including:

  •        In place Analysis
  •        Dynamic Analysis
  •        Spectral/Deterministic Fatigue Analysis
  •        Seismic Analysis – Response spectrum, time history, equivalent static pushover
  •        Ship Impact
  •        Non-Linear Pushovers – intact, member criticality
  •        Sensitivity Studies

Additionally, all forms of structural studies can be performed including:

  •        Strengthening Design
  •        Structural Life Extension Studies
  •        Independent design verification – new built
  •        Re-assessment as part of SIM (In-Service Integrity)

IMPAC has developed a qualitative RBI methodology for subsea inspection planning. The methodology also allows for over-ride from quantitative analyses if they are performed. The over-ride is based on calculated RSR values from ultimate strength analysis.

The RBI methodologies have been developed within our in-house tool.

The tool also has capability for storage of all structural data related to assets satisfying the ‘Data’ element of the lifecycle process. The RBI methodology generates and inspection plan and risk based interval. (Evaluation and Strategy elements).

A semi-quantitative methodology for structural topsides RBI has also been developed. As some typical topsides structures may consist of thousands of structural components, the methodology adopts a rational approach by grouping similar components into logical groups greatly reducing the data entry and complexity of developing a topsides inspection plan.

Pipeline integrity is the ability of the pipeline to operate safely and withstand applied loads during its Life cycle.

Pipeline integrity is maintained through the development and application of a pipeline integrity management system (PIM).

PIM of pipelines is a systematic, comprehensive and integrated approach to proactively counter the threats to pipeline integrity through risk assessment, inspection planning, monitoring, inspection and targeted maintenance. PIM plans are a critical tool in maintaining pipelines and monitoring pipeline corrosion.

IMPAC develop PIM and assure the integrity of onshore and offshore pipelines through application and assessment in accordance with DNV-RP-F116 and DNV-OS-F101.

Tasks performed in the assurance of pipeline integrity and the development of a PIM include:

  •        Pipeline RBI
  •        Defect assessment
  •        Failure Assessment
  •        ILI data analysis
  •        Fitness-for-service (FFS) assessments
  •        Free-span Pipeline study

IMPAC experts have proven experience in developing inspection plans for static equipment utilising RBI methodologies in accordance with API 580/581 for onshore plant and DNV-RP-G101 for offshore topsides equipment. Typical facilities that can be considered include:

1) Onshore facilities – gas processing, receiving facilities, & LNG.

2) Offshore facilities – FPSO, production & wellhead platforms

3) Petrochemical Plant – Oil Refinery, NH3, Urea, Methanol, Nitric Acid, tank farms, etc.

Inspection methodologies applied following RBI assessment are consistent with the requirements of API 510 / 570 / 653 as appropriate. Written schemes of examination (WSE) are typically developed for the assets concerned.

We have developed in-house software for the entire inspection planning process based on a semi-quantitative approach.

In addition to inspection planning, services for static equipment also extend to:

  •        Integrity assessments
  •        Fitness-for-service (FFS) to API 579
  •        Anomaly assessment and repair recommendation
  •        Identification of SCEs and development of Performance Standards
  •        Development of Integrity Operating Windows (IOW)
  •        Asset Life Extension Studies

Typical static equipment items that can be considered include:

  •        Pressure equipment including
  •        Pressure vessels
  •        Boilers
  •        Pressure relief devices
  •        Process piping
  •        Heat exchangers
  •        Atmospheric storage tanks

IMPAC provides a range of Safety Engineering support services for Brownfield and Greenfield design projects including:

  • Facility Siting Review

Development of Philosophies for:

  • Safety Fire & Gas detection, Fire Fighting Safety Layout Study,  Fire and Gas Mapping Study

 

  • Relief & Blowdown (R&BD) Study, Flare Radiation study, Vent Dispersion study
  • Hazardous Area Classification, Firewater Demand Calculation, Firewater Line Sizing
  • Hydraulic analysis of Firewater network, Acoustically induced Vibration (AIV)
  • Flow Induced Vibration (FIV) Study
  • Reliability, Availability & Maintainability (RAM) study, Reliability Centred Maintenance (RCM) Study