What is RBI ?

Risk based integrity assurance is a proactive process used to understand equipment risk profile at any particular time during its lifecycle and put in place strategies to manage and reduce potential risks. Risk Based Inspection (RBI) forms a major part of this assurance process as applied to static equipment items of plant. It is an optimized inspection plan derived from a detailed integrity risk assessment of each equipment item.

RBI is replacing traditional fixed interval inspection of static equipment items of plant in many companies. In a typical chemical plant, the static equipment items may include reactors, distillation columns, heat exchangers, various other types of pressure vessels, reformers, boilers, fired heaters, piping, storage tanks, etc.

Our RBI technology process jointly developed by PP SIMTECH & BP Chemicals has been shown to improve integrity, safety & equipment availability whilst achieving the financial benefits linked with RBI. Some of the major benefits are attributable to identification of damage mechanisms which were not inspected for previously, better understanding of EACH equipment item vulnerabilities, elimination of needless intrusive inspections of some items (replaced with non-invasive inspection methods, often when the equipment is on-line), extension to internal inspection intervals for most items (i.e. found to be over-inspected previously) and in many cases extension to existing plant run-length time between turnarounds and quicker TA times than previously.

In simple terms, our RBI technology is a process to manage structural integrity of a plant item based on the potential risks caused by its damage mechanisms. The integrity risk assessment is carried out by a multi-discipline team study process and particularly focuses attention on all active and potential damage mechanisms which could affect an item. This is followed by an evaluation of integrity risk profiles for each of the identified damage mechanisms for the item. Optimised inspection plan (inspection interval, method & scope) is then set up, which addresses each of the damage mechanisms applicable to the item, whilst ensuring the effectiveness and capability of the selected NDT inspection methods match identified damage mechanisms. Other mitigating strategies identified by the RBI team are also set up to support the optimised inspection intervals. Through this process the identified risks associated with each item are managed within defined acceptance levels, thus providing equipment integrity assurance and reliability at optimum costs to plant owner.

Our RBI Assurance technology process is fully supported by RBI Assurance system software, rbiAsystTM also jointly developed by PP SIMTECH & BP Chemicals.