Fifty plant words

Plant language is part safety system and part belonging. Learn the words in the order a new worker is likely to hear them.

The vocabulary of the fence, in the order you'd learn it — from the gate, to the unit, to the control room. Say these right and nobody asks where you're from.

At the gate

1. Badge. The plant's own ID, issued after its orientation. Different from the card. 2. The card. The safety-council card from ISTC on Decker Drive. Proof you sat through the hazards; required by every contractor, because of federal rule 1910.119(h). 3. BOP. Basic Orientation Plus, the course the card certifies. 4. FR. Flame-resistant clothing — shirt and pants that won't keep burning. Required on nearly every site; cotton under it. 5. PPE. Personal protective equipment: hard hat, glasses, gloves, boots, the FR, ear plugs, the monitor. 6. Monitor. The gas detector clipped to your collar. Reads for H2S, oxygen, flammables and sometimes benzene. Never off. 7. TWIC. The federal card for the waterside — docks and terminals. 8. Contractor. The company that hires you for turnaround or nested work. Your check comes from them, not the plant. 9. Nested. A contractor's crew that lives inside one fence year-round. The steady version. 10. Per diem. The daily money for lodging and meals when you're away from home. Ask if it's on top or folded in.

On the unit

11. Unit. One process — a crude unit, a cat cracker, an olefins furnace. A plant is a set of units. 12. Tower. A distillation column. The tall ones. 13. Drum. A vessel that holds or separates liquid; on a coker, the huge ones that fill with coke. 14. Exchanger. A heat exchanger — a bundle of tubes where hot fluid warms cold fluid through the walls. Hundreds on a site; pulled and cleaned every turnaround. 15. Heater. The fired furnace that brings feed to temperature. The tall stacks. 16. Flare. The safety valve with a flame on it. Burns emergency gas at height. 17. Rack. Pipe rack — the elevated steel highway of pipes across a plant. 18. Manway. The bolted hatch you open to get into a vessel. Where the hole watch sits. 19. Blind. A steel plate bolted into a line to isolate it. Counted in and counted out. 20. LOTO. Lockout/tagout. Your own padlock on the energy source; only you take it off. 21. Permit. The signed paper that authorizes this job, this place, this time. No permit, no work. 22. Hot work. Anything that sparks: welding, cutting, grinding. Its own permit and a fire watch. 23. Fire watch. The person with the extinguisher during hot work and thirty minutes after. 24. Hole watch. The attendant at a confined space — counts everyone in and out, calls the evacuation. The legal term is attendant. 25. Confined space. Any vessel, tank or pit a person enters. Federal rule 1910.146. 26. Stop work. The authority, on every badge, to halt a job that's wrong. Use it. 27. JSA. Job safety analysis — the step-by-step hazard sheet read before a task. 28. Tailgate. The morning safety brief, so named because it used to happen at one. 29. Scaffold. First up, last down. Nothing happens without it. 30. Spool. A prefabricated section of pipe, cut and welded in the shop, fitted in the field. 31. Iso. Isometric drawing — the pipefitter's map of a spool in three dimensions. 32. Coupon. A test piece a welder welds to qualify; the row of them on the bench is a career. 33. Cert. Certification — a welder's, per process and position; an inspector's API card; a crane operator's NCCCO. 34. NDE. Non-destructive examination — x-ray, ultrasound — how the inspector reads a weld without cutting it. 35. Catalyst. The powder or pellets that make a reactor work; dumped and reloaded on a turnaround. 36. Coke. The solid carbon left in a coker drum, and the crust that fouls everything else. 37. H2S. Hydrogen sulfide — the sour gas that kills your nose first. The reason for the monitor. 38. Benzene. The aromatic with its own federal standard and its own blood tests. 39. Nitrogen. What a unit is purged with before opening; also what displaces the oxygen in a confined space. Respect it. 40. Steam. Everywhere. Strips, heats, purges, drives. The plume off the towers.

In the control room

41. Board. The console; the board operator sits at it. "Who's on the board?" 42. Field. Outside, walking the unit. "Who's in the field?" 43. DCS. The distributed control system — the screens, the controllers, the whole nervous system. 44. Alarm. The system saying it can't hold a value. Most are nothing; the craft is knowing which. 45. Setpoint. The target a controller holds — the number the board operator changes. 46. Trip. An automatic shutdown when a value crosses a safety limit. The flare that follows is the trip working. 47. Upset. Anything off-normal. "The unit's upset." Also the word TCEQ uses for a reportable release. 48. Turnover. The handoff at shift change, written and read aloud. The most important ten minutes. 49. Start-up. Bringing a unit from cold to running, by procedure, the most careful week of the cycle. 50. Turnaround. The planned shutdown every few years. The word the whole town runs on. Explained here.

Sources

OSHA, 29 CFR 1910.119, 1910.146, 1910.147, 1910.252, 1910.1028; OSHA Technical Manual, Section IV, Chapter 2. Association of Reciprocal Safety Councils; ISTC. TSA, TWIC. EPA, flare fact sheet. TCEQ, emissions-event reporting. The rest is the working vocabulary of Gulf Coast plants as used on site.

En español

Cincuenta palabras de planta, en el orden en que se aprenden — de la puerta a la unidad a la sala de control. En la puerta: la credencial de la planta; la tarjeta del consejo de seguridad (ISTC, Decker Drive; prueba de que escuchó los peligros; exigida por la regla federal 1910.119(h)); BOP, el curso; FR, la ropa resistente al fuego; EPP, el equipo de protección; el monitor de gas en el cuello, nunca apagado; TWIC para el muelle; el contratista (su cheque viene de él, no de la planta); anidado (cuadrilla que vive dentro de una cerca todo el año); per diem (pregunte si va encima o escondido). En la unidad: la unidad, la torre, el tambor, el intercambiador, el calentador, la antorcha (válvula de seguridad con llama), el rack de tubería, la boca de acceso, el ciego (placa que aísla una línea; se cuentan al entrar y al salir), LOTO (su candado; solo usted lo quita), el permiso (sin permiso no hay trabajo), trabajo en caliente, guardia de incendio (treinta minutos después), vigilante de espacio confinado (cuenta a todos, ordena la salida), espacio confinado (regla 1910.146), stop work (la autoridad de parar, en cada credencial), JSA (análisis de seguridad del trabajo), la junta matutina, el andamio (primero arriba, último abajo), el carrete de tubería, el isométrico, el cupón de soldadura (una fila de ellos es una carrera), la certificación, el examen no destructivo, el catalizador, el coque, H2S (mata el olfato primero), el benceno (con su propio estándar y sus propios análisis de sangre), el nitrógeno (purga la unidad; desplaza el oxígeno; respételo), el vapor. En la sala de control: el tablero, el campo, el DCS, la alarma, el punto de ajuste, el disparo (paro automático; la antorcha que sigue es el disparo funcionando), el upset (todo lo anormal; también la palabra de TCEQ para una liberación reportable), el relevo (escrito y leído en voz alta), el arranque, el turnaround — la palabra con la que corre el pueblo.