Berkeley Engineering And Research, Inc.

Manufacturing, Refinery & Offshore Plant Failures

 

With countless offshore and manufacturing plants across the Unite states, it's no surprise that plant safety is a high priority as the equipment and facilities age under harsh environments.  Over the years, BEAR engineers have had multiple cases and gained valuable first-hand experience on how to evaluate these incidents.  Currently, BEAR is working on the 2020 Grinding Plant Explosion in Houston, Texas. As a result of the explosion, homes and businesses as far as half a mile away were damaged and resulted in three deaths.

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BEAR engineers are highly experienced in the hazard analysis of Manufacturing Plants, Refineries and Power Plants. Other major projects we've successfully worked on:

 

• 1986 Mojave Power Plant failure in Mojave, CA

• 1985 Syncrude Processing plant fire and explosion in Fort McMurray, Canada

• 1991 Angus Nitroparaffin Plant in Sterlington, LA

• 2010 Deepwater Horizon blowout in the Gulf 

• 2014 Center Ethanol Plant fire and Explosion in Sauget, IL

 

The BEAR engineering team has extensive experience in mechanical design and control systems, having assisted with the design of numerous chemical plants, fluidized catalytic cracking units, industrial lubricant plants, coking units and other processing plants.

 

CEO, Dr. Glen Stevick wrote his PhD thesis on how and why the Mojave Power Plant explosion occurred, an event that caused five fatalities and millions of dollars in property damage. In addition to failure analysis, BEAR engineers have also developed solutions to prevent further accidents, such as control system interlocks to prevent operator error in the field (e.g. opening the wrong vessel to atmosphere) and simulators to help train operators in recognizing and avoiding mistakes out in the plant.