A Long estAbLished precision
engineering compAny
Our main customers are offshore oil and gas
technology companies who do not have their
own machining facilities. We also cater for the
distilling and food processing industry.
We specialise in high temperature alloys,
stainless steel, copper alloys, aluminium,
ferrous metals and plastics.
proud to work with rig deLuge.
www.standfast-engineering.com
01340 881371
Victoria street, craigellachie,
banffshire, Ab38 9sr
2
1 RigDeluge® Free Flow Nozzle™ Technology.
2 RigDeluge® Hybrid Sprinkler Nozzle™
RIGDELUGE® HYBRID NOZZLE™
“My latest innovation is the RigDeluge® Hybrid Sprinkler
Nozzle™, which is the first nozzle in the world that doesn’t
require an additional protection device (such as the
RigDeluge® CFT™ Adaptor or the RigDeluge® Reducing
Bush™) to prevent it from blocking. This nozzle has many
new features and can be used for both sprinkler systems
and heat suppression systems by simply changing the
dispersion heads.”
Q. The Piper Alpha disaster, off the coast of Aberdeen,
killed 167 workers on 6th July 1988 and was the world’s
deadliest oil rig incident. 28 years on, have lessons been
learnt to prevent such a tragedy from happening again?
“Unfortunately, a ‘fail and fix’ process still exists in the
oil and gas industry, whereby a fix effective for a tick box
exercise in the short-term is likely to fail on first time
activation of the system when there is a real-time fire.
“A ‘fail and fix’ process is used to achieve compliance,
“You don’t get a second
chance with a fire so you
need to be confident that
the system will operate
first time every time,
regardless of delivery
line contamination.”
which even after being proven to fail as a solution (as on
the Piper Alpha), is still accepted by the authorities and
the industry in general to achieve a compliance standard
certification.
“Before the Piper Alpha fire, the platform was on an
extended compliance standard regime, where the safety
critical fire sprinkler systems were found to block due to
debris choking the sprinkler heads and even small bore
pipe lines. A ‘fail and fix’ process was used to achieve a
compliance standard - nozzles were removed, cleaned and
replaced and pipe lines were ‘rodded’ to remove concentric
corrosion and scale. We can note, as with today, that the
sprinkler heads used, which were given approval status,
were never tested against blocking. If they had been they
would have failed, again as with current sprinkler heads
utilised today.
“The Cullen Report noted these failings and yet, as I have
noted, they are still being used today, even when they
don’t have to be. What is even more concerning is that the
engineered solution is more cost effective than the solution
proven to fail.
“You don’t get a second chance with a fire so you need to
be confident that the system will operate first time every
time, regardless of delivery line contamination.
“As a company, we would never complete a ‘fail and fix’
process; I engineered a solution so we would never have
to.”
HSE INTERNATIONAL
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