Ex inspections — A journey for maintenance engineers

Ex installations are safety critical elements. Projects still fail to deliver a good quality Ex installation mostly due to lack of proper planning and execution of the Ex inspections during commissioning phase. The poor quality of Ex installation delivered to the maintenance organization becomes a nightmare as the maintenance organization is neither resourced nor does it have adequate budget to handle this challenge. This paper will discuss the Ex inspection journey of a new non-ATEX site where Ex inspections and Ex equipment records were not properly handled during the project phase. No Ex dossier was delivered as a part of the project. The main challenges faced by the maintenance staff included Ex competency, Ex Inspection strategy, resources constraints and access issues. Over a period of years the site developed a robust competency development process, overcame resources and access issues to deliver a high quality Ex inspection campaign. The journey includes some experiments to overcome the access issues for the Ex equipment installed at an inaccessible height without installing expensive scaffolding. An interesting use of abseilers to execute Ex close inspections and prepare Ex register is discussed with details. Various experiences and lessons learned during the four year journey are shared in this paper.