Mitigation Strategies for Fire and Explosion Risks

 

Fire and explosion hazards remain among the most consequential threats in energy, chemical, pharmaceutical, and manufacturing facilities. Reducing their likelihood and consequences demands a structured blend of prevention, detection, protection, and learning. Robust risk assessment, disciplined risk management, and mature process safety management (PSM) systems provide the backbone, while frontline design and operational controls deliver everyday protection. This overview summarises practical, defensible strategies that organisations can implement and sustain, from concept design through decommissioning, using HAZID and HAZOP to drive continuous improvement.

Read: What is Process Safety Management

1) Design for Inherent Safety

Risk reduction begins at the drawing board. Favour inherently safer options, minimise inventories of flammables, substitute less hazardous materials, and operate at lower temperature and pressure where feasible. Simplify processes to reduce failure modes, specify fire-resistant construction, and segregate dangerous units from occupied buildings. Apply layout strategies such as separation distances, blast-resistant siting of critical control rooms, and upwind personnel shelters. Early-stage HAZID workshops help systematically identify ignition sources, leak points, and escalation pathways, ensuring the design embeds prevention rather than relying solely on add-on protections.

2) Rigorous Hazard Studies and Risk Assessment

Use a lifecycle approach to studies: HAZID during concept, HAZOP at detailed design and pre-startup, and periodic revalidation. Couple these with quantitative methods, event tree/fault tree analysis, layers of protection analysis (LOPA), and consequence modelling for thermal radiation, overpressure, and toxic dispersion. A well-structured risk assessment clarifies credible worst cases, safety integrity level (SIL) targets, and safeguards needed to meet tolerability criteria. Keep studies living: update after modifications, incident learnings, management of change actions, and as site conditions or standards evolve.

3) Prevention: Control of Ignition and Loss of Containment

Technical controls should prioritize leak prevention and ignition control. Specify high-integrity equipment (double mechanical seals, fire-safe valves), corrosion management, overpressure protection, and robust relief and flare systems. Employ gas-tight seals on rotating equipment handling hydrocarbons and route drains to closed systems. Control ignition sources through hazardous area classification, intrinsically safe instrumentation, grounding/bonding, hot-work permitting, and static control. Procedural defences, lockout/tagout, line-breaking permits, and competent isolation practices are critical to preventing inadvertent releases. Vendor management and construction quality assurance close common gaps that later become latent failures.

4) Detection, Shutdown, and Mitigation Systems

Fast detection and decisive action limit escalation. Install appropriately spaced gas and flame detectors, smoke and heat detection in enclosed spaces, and integrate them with automatic emergency shutdown (ESD) logic. Define cause-and-effect matrices linking detection to actions: valve closure, pump trip, deluge activation, and ventilation shutdown. Fire protection should combine passive and active measures: fireproofing of load-bearing steel, fire-resistant barriers, emergency drainage to contain burning liquids, and water deluge/foam systems sized for credible scenarios. Verify functional performance through SIL verification, proof-testing intervals, and bypass management under a formal impairment control process.

5) Operating Discipline and Human Factors

Operational excellence turns engineering into reliable protection. Build strong procedures for startup, shutdown, and abnormal operation; keep them concise and field-usable. Apply competency-based training, simulator drills, and emergency response exercises with the local fire service. Human-machine interface design should reduce error likelihood: clear alarms, prioritized annunciation, and task-appropriate automation. Shift handover, contractor induction, and permit-to-work are recurring weak points; treat them as critical controls with verification checks. Leadership should monitor field adherence via layered assurance supervisor walkdowns, audits, and leading indicators.

6) Process Safety Management and Risk Management Systems

A mature process safety management framework ties everything together. Core elements include asset integrity, management of change, operating procedures, competence, incident investigation, and emergency planning. Integrate risk management with business planning: define risk appetite, maintain a register of major accident hazards, assign accountable owners for barriers, and track performance using both lagging and leading metrics (e.g., safety-critical equipment overdue for tests, impaired protections, and permit quality). Use digital barrier dashboards to visualise the health of safeguards and to trigger management attention before deterioration turns into an event.

7) Emergency Preparedness and Community Protection

Recognise that residual risk remains. Develop realistic emergency response plans aligned to credible major scenarios, including mutual-aid agreements and off-site communication protocols. Maintain muster points, practice evacuation and shelter-in-place, and provide emergency power and lighting. Model potential blast and thermal contours to inform community outreach and land-use planning, and ensure alarms and instructions are understandable to all personnel and neighbours.

Conclusion

Mitigating fire and explosion risk is a continuous, system-wide endeavour, not a one-off study or equipment purchase. Inherent safety at design, rigorous HAZID/HAZOP, quantitative risk assessment, disciplined risk management, and an integrated process safety management system create overlapping layers that prevent incidents and blunt their consequences. Organisations that sustain these layers through verification, learning, and leadership focus achieve resilient operations, protect people and the environment, and secure long-term business continuity.

—-----------------------------------------------------

Read More On Fire and Explosion Risk Assessment (FERA)

https://synergenog.com/core-services/technical-risk/fire-explosion-risk-analysis/

SynergenOG - Process safety management consultants

https://synergenog.com/process-safety-management-consultants/