Back to basics
ANDREW PERKS
Andrew Perks is a subject expert in ammonia refrigeration. Since undertaking his apprenticeship in Glasgow in
the 1960s he has held positions of contracts engineer, project engineer, refrigeration design engineer, company
director for a refrigeration contracting company and eventually owning his own contracting company and low
temperature cold store. He is now involved in adding skills to the ammonia industry, is merSETA accredited and
has written a variety of unit standards for SAQA that define the levels to be achieved in training in our industry.
SANS 1514:208 MAJOR HAZARDOUS
INSTALLATIONS: EMERGENCY
RESPONSE PLANNING
By Andrew Perks
Last month we chatted about new legislation and how it affects us
– both the good and bad.
M
ore paperwork, more non-productive hours, but is it
reality? If we are honest, the majority make good sense
and are just there because there have to be enforceable rules.
The other issue of course is who enforces them?
This month I want to talk about Emergency Response
Planning. The old adage, ‘he who fails to plan, plans to fail’ still
applies today. The new Major Hazardous Installations SANS
1514:2018 regulation applies. If the possibility of an emergency
exists (can you tell me of any place where there is production or
moving equipment where it doesn’t exist?), there is a need for a
proper emergency plan. Sure, you have a plan on the wall that
shows you the escape routes, but it is often out-of-date. And
there’s always the more relevant plan of ‘run like hell’.
Ask the fire chief – it really doesn’t cut it. An emergency plan
that is not exercised once or twice a year is not an emergency
plan, but another load of paperwork taking up space in
someone’s drawer or laptop. Or it could be that irritating
exercise you do periodically at 2pm on a Friday when you could
instead be going home an hour earlier.
If you work in some kind of construction industry, it’s difficult
to do a completely random emergency drill. What happens to
the production? Rest assured when you have an emergency it’s
not going to happen at 2pm on a Friday. So, what is this new
regulation all about?
It’s about trying to understand where the issues are and
looking firstly to mitigate the risk, which is not always totally
possible due to the human element, and secondly, having a
documented procedure that everyone is aware of that kicks in
as soon as the emergency is declared.
www.hvacronline.co.za
The recent incident I spoke of involving Jose Mata highlighted
his company’s short fallings with their response procedure
– nobody was the designated incident commander and as
such nobody had the responsibility, and more importantly
authority, to get the emergency plan operational so
everybody was in charge. Sound familiar? One of our saving
graces is that there are a lot of good people out there doing a
good job and as such these emergencies are minimal. But one
fatality is one too many.
EACH EMERGENCY PLAN HAS A SIMILAR
BASIC STRUCTURE:
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There must be an overview of the on-site plan
highlighting potential incidents and listing any other
types of incidents;
There must be objective pre-plans for a spill, fire or
production incident;
A list of management, site staff listing contact details
and each one’s area of responsibilities detailing the
structure for normal working hours, after hours and
holiday periods;
There must be a command structure organogram for a
low-level emergency and for a high-level emergency;
The organogram will indicate the command structure for
the independent teams;
There must be response-plan scenarios which are
upgraded as the incident escalates;
An organogram of key staff to be notified after the
incident or whilst it is in progress;
RACA Journal I February 2020
67