Boiler plant hazard assessment — a new requirement of the Finnish pressure equipment legislation

The Finnish pressure equipment legislation was modified in 1999 and a requirement for boiler plant hazard assessment came into effect. According to the requirement, the plant’s owner and holder must (1) identify potential hazards, their causes and consequences, (2) assess the significance of these, and (3) assess the appropriateness of the risk reduction measures and safety precautions. All this, i.e. the description of the plant’s hazard assessment process and its results, must be in the form of a written report to be presented to the inspection body for approval. The hazard assessment requirement and an approach to fulfil the requirement are presented and discussed in this paper. The approach is to a large extent based on the experiences that VTT has obtained from projects whose aim has been to prepare a safety report based on the requirements of the Seveso Directive. Experiences based on case studies are also presented.