Posted By Descarte
On the COMAH Site of the HSE there is reference to the "guidance for the location and design of occupied building on chemical manufacturing sites" and a link. But the link is dead and I cannot find this anywhere else on the web?!?! Maybe becuase it was a document by the CIA it is now classified? Or maybe that is a different CIA

Aha, now found the problem, the HSE called the document by a slightly different name and I have now found the "Guidance for the location and design of occupied buildings on chemical manufacturing sites" at the CIA. I guess this used to be provided for free on the HSE site via a "docs trade scheme"? but is now unavailable.

What I was specifically looking for were the requirements for windows to be laminated or filmed at an production site which uses flammable liquids, site is also under COMAH and DSEAR but could not find requirements under these for construction of buildings close by.

Is anyone familiar with this requirement?

Thanks in advance

Desc

Posted By Descarte
Thank you for the information and comments emailed it proved to be quite useful.

FYI -

" People can also suffer from fire and smoke inhalation. In a building they can be protected for some time dependent upon the fire resistance of the building and the type of fire attack that the building is exposed to. However, the building needs to remain intact for there to be any protection.
A blast which removes a window or a wall permits any following fireball to enter and, if the building has partially collapsed, evacuation may be impeded. The Hickson & Welch incident") is an example of a flame and smoke entering a building with fatal results."

It seems to hinge also on the people inside the building and their responsability towards shutting down and making plant safe i.e. in a control room or potentially safety advisor :-)

If laminated glass isnt present or polycarbonate sheet then they can be covered with film to give added protection. This is actually relatively inexpensive as I found out in my last position. Is it essential for all windows, no, but is this small extra cost worth it set against the extra protection it could provide, I would say in my situation yes.

I know after an explosion at a UK refinery this was later applied and after an accident involving glass panels in doors this was also applied. Guess a risk assessment could justify it, or not as the case may be.

Desc

Posted By Ian Waldram
Every COMAH site should have internal quantified consequence assessments which define predicted explosion overpressures for a range of scenarios, though these might not appear in the public Safety Report. You need to link any decision about strengthening glass to the hazard contours re overpressure, not just apply it because you think windows might be damaged.

Incidentally, another reason for using film is to prevent shards from causing major injuries to those in the room at the time. A recent example is Buncefield, where the nearby offices were unoccupied, but there would likely have been large numbers of glass injuries in normal working hours. Makes you wonder what their predicted overpressure contours looked like? - no doubt we will learn something from the HSE investigation in due course.