Ethical issues in engineering design - 3TU.Centre for Ethics and ...

Piping and equipment
to check whether new designs and refurbishments comply with PED regulations.
Approved designs obtain a CE mark. In the Netherlands Lloyd’s Register
Stoomwezen is one of the Notified Bodies. If no harmonised EU codes exists for
a product or these are not used in the design then a Competent Body has to check
the design and help the producer prove compliance with EU directives. 2 Under
the PED the producer of an installation has certain responsibilities, for example
the request for CE certification has to be made by the producer. It is sometimes
very difficult to indicate who the producer is. Is it the contractor who welds
something on a pipe? Is it the engineering company that has made the design or
perhaps the chemical company that uses the pipeline? The issues around who to
regard as the producer still had to be resolved at the time the PED was
introduced. According to the Stoomwezen the engineering company is the
producer.
Other regulations relevant to the design of (petro)chemical installations, are
those encompassing environmental regulations and regulations regarding noise
and smell. Such regulations are commonly used to regulate the outcome of the
design process. The installation should perform within in the limits of allowed
noise levels and emissions.
5.2.2 Codes regarding pressure vessels and piping
Legislation and regulation often make references to codes. The organisations that
formulate the codes differ in different countries. Codes can be formulated by
professional organisations (the American Society of Mechanical Engineers
(ASME)), industry (Regels in the Netherlands) or by governmental institutions
(British Standards). Codes are usually written rules of good design practice that, if
used correctly, should protect the health and safety of persons and the
environment. In some countries, the application of a certain code is required by
law. In many states of the United States, the application of the ASME codes for
pressure vessels and piping is required by law. Codes are often prescriptive; they
prescribe certain hardware and calculations. In the Netherlands the Regels were
guidelines and it was therefore not required by law to use them. However, a
design made using the Regels was assumed to comply with current legislation. At
this moment there are some harmonised EU codes, for example NEN-EN 13445
and 13480 but not all national codes have been substituted by European codes as
yet. Under the PED it is possible to use the codes of another EU country instead
of always using the national code. In the Netherlands a choice can be made to
design according to the German Merkblätter for example.
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2 A Notified Body can also be a Competent body but this need not be the case. Until the PED
came into force in May 2002, the Stoomwezen was the only certifying organization in the
Netherlands. Under the PED other organizations can also become Notified Bodies.
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