Scheduling Regular Mechanical Integrity Assessments to Protect Assets and Employees

Industrial and commercial operations must meet a wide range of compliance, safety, and reliability factors. Without these levels, operations can screech to a halt, or undiagnosed issues could lead all the way to the loss of employee life.

Preventing such damage to your business, team, and operations starts with mechanical integrity assessments. You want to ensure all your systems are running at full capacity, without sacrificing the risk and well-being of your operations. We at Dreiym Engineering often perform such pipeline integrity services and consulting for industrial clients or those working with storage tanks and vessels.

The best advice we can give is to have regular inspections that generate peace of mind and prevent unwanted results.

What Is Mechanical Integrity?

Mechanical integrity is like getting a clean bill of health from your medical provider. It is knowing your body has no significant concerns and all the included systems are operating as intended.

For a business, that could be from looking closely at rotating machinery to storage tanks so there are no leaks or malfunctions. Such inspections keep your productivity levels high and minimize downtime. Plus, you get the added bonus of keeping up with regulatory bodies, such as OSHA’s Process Safety Management (PSM) standard.

Besides the obvious savings to your productivity, you also reduce the chances of paying high medical premiums and lost time when employees get hurt. You want to cultivate a workspace that feels welcome because you help to keep your team protected in their duties.

The Risks of Neglecting Mechanical Integrity

While we at Dreiym Engineering may stick to more specialized inspections like pipeline integrity services and consulting, we frequently offer expert testimony for all kinds of operations that could have been easily prevented with a pair of second eyes taking a look at essential systems. When performed well, such assessments help with:

• Preventing Equipment Failures that can tax industrial equipment far beyond intended use in heat, pressure, and operational wear. Once overtaxed, these systems can quickly fatigue from corrosion or cracks, leading to widespread damage.
• Operational Downtime that will cost your business significant financial resources to get back online and within designated schedules. Even a brief shutdown can lead to losses that will stop your business in its tracks.
• Improving Safety Hazards by looking at mechanical integrity around pressurized systems, structural collapse, equipment malfunctions, unwanted leaks, and so much more. You want an experienced engineering team to know what and how to check your system.
• Regulatory Penalties from Rising. When you prioritize the mechanical integrity of equipment, you reduce the fines or legal actions you’ll have to deal with down the road. Considering the litigious society we live in, this is a significant benefit.

Take the time to work with a professional team, and you’ll have much more peace of mind moving forward with production lines in your facility.

The Benefits of Regular Mechanical Integrity Assessments

Investing in regular pipeline integrity services and consulting or mechanical help prevents all kinds of failures. It lowers the amount of time and money you’ll spend having to complete a sudden fix or introduce multi-layered safety measures that could have been prevented.

Adopting a proactive risk management stance is much more beneficial. The more you can detect equipment vulnerabilities, the better. Schedule out routine assessments to better identify potential issues like corrosion or misaligned rotations before they escalate.

When done right, such preventative assessments extend the working lifespan of your business assets. That helps you maintain a competitive advantage in your industry, even when profit margins are razor thin.

Finally, the cost savings also include improved safety for your team, customers, and equipment. It ensures you meet regulatory oversight and reduce the likelihood of physical harm to anyone that will end with expensive mitigating cases and a loss to your public brand reputation.

What Does a Mechanical Integrity Assessment Involve?

Think of a mechanical integrity assessment as a thorough checkup of your business, assets, and processes. You want everything to operate with complete functionality and compliance. Each assessment will vary based on the client and scope of system management, but you can expect a process similar to:

Step 01 | Visual Inspections

Trained professionals and forensic engineers come to your location to examine equipment and systems for signs of damage like corrosion, wear cracks, or unwanted deformities.

Step 02 | Non-Destructive Testing (NDT)

Inspecting the internal condition of materials around your systems without damaging any of the essential equipment. This could involve ultrasonic testing, radiographic testing, magnetic particle testing, and more.

Step 03 | Fitness-for-Service Evaluations

Determining whether the equipment you have on-site can remain in operation or if it requires repairs, alterations, or replacement. Everything from analyzing operating conditions to finding material component defects must be considered.

Step 04 | Reporting

Documenting everything found through comprehensive reports that can be passed onto your organizational leadership, insurance companies, or legal team. These accurate records provide a benchmark for measuring future assessments and audits as well as historical context whenever you’re considering a change.

How to Implement a Regular Assessment Program

Of course, hiring out pipeline integrity services and consulting is one thing, but changing your business culture is something quite different. If you want as much protection as possible, you need to develop a maintenance schedule with regular assessments.

Start by setting a schedule around high-stress components like pressure vessels or equipment prone to degradation. Train your staff in these events and ensure they can determine problems from visual inspectors whenever walking around your systems and looking for wear or damage. That little extra layer of protection goes a long way due to more eyeballs looking for issues.

Most importantly, partner with experts. While you may have all the experience in the world dealing with mechanical integrity, having professionals scan through your systems offers that extra peace of mind you and your investors will appreciate – mainly if someone targets your business for liability when there is no underlying cause.

Final Thoughts

Mechanical integrity is essential to your business. It is far more than a regulatory obligation because having a safe workplace and a smoothly running production line means better profit margins and company culture.

At Dreiym Engineering, we want to help through comprehensive pipeline integrity services and consulting. Our team offers over 30 years of experience working with organizations of all sizes and scopes. We cover a wide service area, from our headquarters in Texas to the rest of the nation and beyond.

As a smaller, more specialized firm, we have the expertise to save you time, money, and effort. Give us a call today, and let’s set up a time to evaluate your mechanical systems for a range of issues related to integrity, fire prevention, electrical damage, and so much more.