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On safety - one of the places I had the opportunity to visit had a car park where you were only allowed to reverse in. I'm not sure if it was a holdover from a
by joshvm 5y ago
On safety - one of the places I had the opportunity to visit had a car park where you were only allowed to reverse in. I'm not sure if it was a holdover from a previous establishment, but I think they kept something on site that was volatile enough (like a lot of gas) that if a swift evacuation was required, they didn't want people futzing around getting out of spaces.
- tonyarkles 5y agoI spent some time at an active petroleum refinery a few years ago and one of the safety things that surprised me a little was that every vehicle inside the complex must have the keys in the ignition at all times. Not turned on, but in the event of an evacuation they didn't want anyone to have to futz around looking for keys.
- mikepurvis 5y agoI think part of what's wild about that for me is just imagining the risk analysis that would lead to that kind of thing. Like, obviously not an explosion that's over in seconds, but everyone would be dead anyway. And not a normal fire because then you'd just evacuate as usual and carpool if you can't find your keys. But there's a class of refinery-specific disasters where I guess you have tens of seconds to get out, where looking for your missing keys could well mean the difference between escaping or now.
- akiselev 5y agoA refinery can leak explosive gasses that form a plume in or around the refinery that rises off the ground. Once detected, there's a fairly high chance that one small spark will set it off but it could be many seconds or minutes until it's ignited and it could take multiple smaller explosions to mix in enough oxygen to cause the big one. This gives the staff "plenty" of time to evacuate but it's still an emergency situation where arguing about carpools or knocking things down frantically looking for keys (causing that spark) will eventually get people killed for no benefit.
- tonyarkles 5y agoYup, or even if just one of the vehicles is in the way and the person with the keys is nowhere to be found it could cause a huge problem during an evacuation.
- tonyarkles 5y agoYou've touched on something else that I found extraordinarily impressive there: how amazingly thorough their risk analysis process is and how well thought out their mitigation plans are. When they had the problem I came to help work through (not immediately safety critical, but a big deal, intentionally being vague here), step one was to reach up to the shelf and grab the binder labelled "Business Continuity Plan: Problem $X" and start executing the plan from page 1. It wasn't a plan to fix the problem so much as a plan for how to continue operations until the issue was fixed. Very very impressive. I learned a lot on that gig, and it's really helped influence the way I think about business "disaster planning", whether caused by floods, or data centres burning down, or a rogue sysadmin deleting backups, or whatever. That industry is 100% the opposite of "cowboy".
- sloucher 5y agoMy wife visited Torness (the plant in the article) for a meeting with one of the managers. She went through reception, got her badge, and was on her way up the stairs to the meeting room when the receptionist shouted at her. "Maam! MAAAM!... please hold the handrail". They're nuts about safety - and a good thing too, speaking as someone who lives relatively close-by.
- joshvm 5y agoThis was also the case at this location. Alongside discipline around showing passes, scramble pads on doors and so on. It was even the case in the office building (we were nowhere near anything obviously dangerous). Super strong safety and security culture.