Opportunities and Threats of Risk Based Inspections: The New Italian Legislation on Pressure Equipment Inspection

• Main Authors: P. Bragatto, C. Delle Site, A. Faragnoli
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: AIDIC Servizi S.r.l. 2012-05-01
• Series: Chemical Engineering Transactions
• Online Access: https://www.cetjournal.it/index.php/cet/article/view/7415

Risk based inspection (RBI) is recognized an effective method to reduce risk and raise the level of safety in many industries. Whilst in traditional deterministic approach the inspection frequencies and modes are fixed, in RBI for each item of equipment, the inspection interval depends on the risk level. RBI ensures a higher safety level without increasing the costs; however it has many degrees of freedom and a misuse is possible, by companies that are not safety. For this reason many national Legislation are very cautious with RBI. This is the case of Italy, where, the deterministic approach has been saved in the new regulation on pressure equipment. RBI implementation at a plant must be authorized case by case and operators must demonstrate its equivalence to the deterministic frequencies. The paper presents a method to demonstrate that alternative inspection intervals, resulting from RBI, entail risk levels lower or equal than deterministic inspection intervals. The proposed method fits the requirements of Italian Authorities for RBI exception. Method is also suitable to be exported to other Countries where the legislation is RBI - skeptic.