HSSE Management Tours - BG Group

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Introduction
Asset Integrity Overview
• Asset integrity (also referred to as “process safety”)
is the ability of the asset to perform its required
function effectively whilst safeguarding life and
the environment. Good asset integrity is critical to
our business, as a loss of asset integrity can have
catastrophic effects, leading to major accidents
that result in multiple fatalities as well as very large
economic, environmental and reputational damage
(for example Macondo, Texas City, Piper Alpha, etc).
• Asset integrity management is all about the
prevention and mitigation of unintentional releases
of potentially dangerous materials or energy. For BG
Group, this means safely transporting hydrocarbons
or energy from source to final destination without
loss of containment or other hazardous event. In the
event of a loss of containment or other hazardous
event, systems need to be in place and be available in
good working order to detect and control the event as
well as mitigate the effects.
HSSE Management Tours:
Asset Integrity Guide
• Asset integrity management can be visualised as a
series of control measures or barriers, which either
prevent the hazard from being realised, or limit the
effects of the incident if the hazard is realised. These
barriers are depicted in the “swiss-cheese” model (see
Figure 1) and each contains a mix of plant, people and
processes.
• Each barrier is a high level functional grouping of
safeguards and controls selected to prevent, or limit
the effect of, a major accident or environmental
event. A barrier may therefore include a number of
safety critical systems, and safety critical elements
(SCE).
• Physical plant barriers include, for example,
systems provided for emergency shutdown, relief
and blowdown, fire protection and evacuation.
The presence of the physical plant barriers alone
is not sufficient; these require competent people
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