Safety without wires

Applying the latest wireless technologies to a range of BP operations is helping to enhance safety for people, process plants and pipelines around the world. Michelle Brown reports

Should an emergency situation arise at an industrial site your natural reaction would be to get out swiftly. Swiping your ID badge as you leave might be the last thing on your mind. But what happens if the rescue services think you’re still in the affected area? An entire team could put themselves at risk trying to save someone who is not even there.

Locating all personnel quickly in such circumstances is just one aspect of operational safety that BP’s Digital Communications Technology (DCT) team has been looking at as part of the company’s commitment to enhancing safety.

While technology is no substitute for personal responsibility, DCT’s Chief Technology Office (CTO) has been working with a number of BP’s business units to explore technologies that promise to support the company’s workforce in making their environment more secure.

‘Safety ultimately is about people, their behaviours and their attitude to working safely. But technology can augment their efforts to create a safer working environment,’ says Ken Douglas, CTO director of mobile and wireless applications.

In common with a number of CTO projects in the area of safety and security, the solution to finding everyone after an incident falls under BP’s ‘sensory networks’ and ‘clipboard to computer’ initiatives (Frontiers, April 2004). These projects use a range of wireless sensor technologies to keep managers informed – on site and remotely – about what’s going on.

In the case of personnel tracking, BP has developed a Location Aware Safety System (LASS) that uses radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology to enable safety managers to see at a glance where everyone is on a computer-based map of the site. RFID ‘smart tags’ have a chip and antenna that enable them to be located using radio signals.

Click the link below to view a panel on the Location Aware Safety System trial

Enlarge image

Personnel wear RFID-equipped badges that broadcast their whereabouts each second to a network of wireless transmitters located around the plant. The transmitter network tracks the badges and sends the information to a central computer, which displays their location on a map of the site.

CTO applications director Curt Smith stresses that location awareness is about safety, not snooping on employees. ‘You can set it up to black out certain areas where monitoring is not appropriate. The employees see LASS as a key to improving their safety.’

The system was trialled successfully in the USA last August at BP’s Cherry Point refinery in Washington state, in the reformer process area. A project is now under way to implement LASS throughout the 250 hectare site by the end of 2006.

The technique of using RFID tags with a wireless network also lies at the heart of a separate project to tackle lifting-related accidents within BP’s exploration and production business. Historically, lifting accidents have proved to be a hazard throughout the industry on offshore installations and drilling rigs, and in pipe-laying operations.

‘Many of the people struck by heavy crane loads or lengths of pipe wouldn’t be at risk if the driver had complete awareness of everyone in the vicinity,’ Douglas points out.

But applying location awareness to lifting operations is a different challenge from personnel tracking over a large area. Fast-moving loads call for real-time information and predictive algorithms that can tell the driver if the load is on a collision course with someone. The rapidly changing environment is another issue. Most location tracking systems are pre-programmed with the plant layout but the topology of a deck changes each time a container moves. Two field trials took place last year in Aberdeen, with the next exploratory phase of the project due to begin later this year. DCT expects to have a usable system in place within two or three years.

Reducing risk

A process plant turnaround – when planned shutdowns and maintenance take place – can be a relatively risky time in industrial operations. Turnarounds often involve between 50,000 and 200,000 complex, interrelated jobs, all of which must be completed correctly to be safe. The traditional approach to managing turnarounds has been a system of paper-based signatures, which can cause delays and present opportunities for human error. To reduce these risks, BP has developed another wireless network to take the paper out of the process.

At BP’s chemicals manufacturing site at Hull in the UK, task forces have been established which are focused on finding and applying step change improvements in maintenance and turnaround practices. These teams have been using handheld data recorders to send information from around the Hull site during turnarounds to a central computer via the wireless network.

‘Handheld terminals aren’t new,’ says Douglas, ‘but you’d typically record events on them offline and synchronise the information back at the office. Our wireless network allows the work to be managed in real time.’

The system ensures that the right person signs off on the right job and checks that all the safety-critical tasks have been completed. In addition, by providing information in real time to give greater visibility of which tasks are complete, or indeed others that may need further remedial work, the system can also be used to optimise the sequencing of activities as the turnaround progresses, reducing the slack time built into the original schedule and leading to a reduction in turnaround time.

Wireless networks have also found a home in BP for applications where protecting the environment is the primary aim. For example, remote pipelines are vulnerable to damage by contractors or builders who may inadvertently drive heavy machinery over them or dig them up. This led to the development of a mobile intrusion detection system, which uses ‘motes’ and ‘smart video’ to warn if unauthorised activity threatens to encroach on the pipeline right-of-way.

Motes are self-contained compact devices comprising one or more sensors, a chip, a transmitter and a power source, enabling them to communicate between themselves and form a network. In this case the motes are equipped with infrared sensors to detect movement, and magnetometers to detect the presence of large machinery. This combination is intended to prevent false alarms, for example, avoiding the system being set off by wildlife. The system can also be equipped with on-demand video, which activates only when an alarm has been tripped.

‘Minimising the amount of data we send helps conserve power in these remote instruments,’ says CTO consultant Dave Lafferty.

Following initial success in tests simulating the protection of pipelines, BP is now considering whether the technology might help in other security applications. The experience gained from BP’s trial of the system is expected to result in a commercially-available system by the end of 2006.

In the Alaska’s Prudhoe Bay, BP is trialling the use of wireless technology to monitor pipeline corrosion

In Alaska, BP has been conducting trials of yet another wireless network to monitor pipeline corrosion along its flowlines in the oil and gas fields at Prudhoe Bay.

‘On the North Slope of Alaska, corrosion prevention chemicals are the second largest cost next to labour,’ explains Lafferty. ‘Corrosion measurements previously had to be recorded by hand, with someone making the hazardous journey along icy roads to the flowline measurement points every week.’

If initial trials being conducted by BP’s corrosion, inspection and chemicals group are successful, over 80 measuring points will be equipped with wireless technology to transmit corrosion data in near real time. This will enable engineers to target doses of anti-corrosion chemicals more precisely, avoiding travel in harsh conditions and minimising the amount of chemicals used. The wireless network has been in operation in winter conditions, enduring temperatures down to -50˚C.

Lafferty points out that while the hardware in the various network projects differs from one to another, they do share one thing in common in that they are based on a mesh architecture.

‘Mesh networks allow each transmitter to communicate effectively with all the others,’ he explains. ‘In other words, the network will still work if some of the transmitters are unavailable. They have to deal with difficult environments, and trucks, cranes or other obstacles could break the line of sight. But a mesh network will self-configure to get around that and maintain communications.’

Driving safely

Each year, employees and contractors drive almost 2.5 billion kilometres on BP business, and – perhaps understandably with such distances covered – driving accidents do occur, sometimes fatally. To make drivers’ lives safer, the company continues to seek and apply new ways of combating driving accidents. For example, new guidelines published in 2004 as part of BP’s Driving Safety Standard initiative recommend data recorders – akin to airline ‘black boxes’ – to be fitted to all BP-operated vehicles, and already mandates these for vehicles over 3.5 tonnes undertaking journeys in ‘high-risk’ countries.

CTO is also exploring more innovative approaches to driver safety. One of these, using a commercially available system based on work from the University of Loughborough in the UK, asks drivers a set of questions about their sleep patterns before each journey. Based on their answers and the time of day, the system calculates when the drivers need a rest, raising the alarm when it’s time to pull over.

‘Tiredness is a major cause of driver impairment,’ says Harry Cassar, CTO technology director. ‘The system takes account of circadian rhythms and tells the driver to stop and take a power-nap when they need one.’ BP vehicle fleet managers are currently evaluating implementation of the system.

BP is also exploring innovative approaches to enhancing driver safety in relation to road tanker operations

Innovations that are yet to be commercialised are also being monitored by BP, such as Australian research in which drivers wear special glasses armed with miniature cameras that can tell if a driver is falling asleep by monitoring the eyelids. It is also possible to track the progress of vehicles using technologies based on mobile phone signals or Global Positioning System satellites, enabling reception areas to be ready when road tankers arrive rather than the driver having to stop to make a call, and which could be employed to set off an alarm if the vehicle strays from its expected route.

While all the projects mentioned directly target some aspect of safety, more general initiatives being led by DCT are also helping to reduce the risk of accidents. For example, condition monitoring aims primarily to keep equipment in top working order by providing an early warning of impending problems.

‘Plant failures can be a health and safety issue,’ notes Cassar. ‘DCT has launched a condition monitoring initiative known as predictive analytics that will certainly improve plant safety.’

Predictive analytics is a data-driven approach to condition monitoring that can be applied to any type of machinery. The technique monitors outputs - such as the vibrations generated by a pump or compressor – under different operating conditions, and builds up a ‘fingerprint’ of normal operations. The system can then detect any deviation from the fingerprint, and a database of fingerprints can be generated and used to predict what is happening to the machine.

One of BP’s refineries has been using historical data to test a predictive system that provides early warning of potential equipment failure. The engineers found that the approach could detect some problems more than a month before they would have shown up using conventional monitoring. Live tests are now scheduled at several sites in order to find out how widely the system can be applied.

‘This approach has proved to work well in getting new digital technology into BP’s operations,’ adds Cassar. ‘DCT finds technologies that are broadly applicable to the company’s operations, and then determines their practical limits. The net effect is one of continuously enhancing safety wherever BP works.’

Frontiers copyright and legal notice
Copyright in all published material including photographs, drawings and images in this magazine remains vested in BP plc and third party contributors to this magazine as appropriate. Accordingly neither the whole nor any part of this magazine can be reproduced in any form without express prior permission, either of the entity within BP plc in which copyright resides or the third party contributor as appropriate. Articles, opinions and letters from solicited or unsolicited third party sources appearing in this magazine do not necessarily represent the views of BP plc. Further, while BP plc has taken all reasonable steps to ensure that everything published is accurate it does not accept any responsibility for any errors or resulting loss or damage whatsoever or howsoever caused and readers have the responsibility to thoroughly check these aspects for themselves. Any enquiries about reproduction of content from this magazine should be directed to the Managing Editor (email: terry.knott@uk.bp.com).