Explosives Safety Expert

If you handle explosives, propellants, or pyrotechnics at your company’s facilities, you understand how important safety procedures are. However, implementing the right procedures and knowing how to keep your employees safe can be a challenge. Bob Morhard and his team at ExploConsult is an explosives safety expert group that can help you improve and implement your safety practices.

If you want to make sure you are always on the cutting-edge of safety, let our consultants help.

Proving a Range of Explosives Safety Support

Safety comes in many forms and is necessary when developing new explosives manufacturing, handling and application procedures. And we’ll work with you every step of the way. Our services include:

Developing safety policies: If your company is new, we can help you develop a comprehensive operating plan with internal and external emergency action plans that manage your risk of an accident.
Evaluating processes: Every company can find some way to improve their safety techniques, and we can help. We look at every aspect of your processes to determine areas for improvement. Then we help you implement those changes to enhance overall safety through Hazards and Operability Studies (HAZOP) and Quantitative Risk Assessments (QRA).
Training workers: An Explosives safety plan is only as good as those who enforce it. That’s why we offer comprehensive training to employers and employees alike to ensure that everyone understands the importance of safety and how to carry out best safety techniques.
Designing workplaces: For new companies, we can start you off on the right foot with a safety-focused workplace design. Our team can guide you on layout and function to ensure your facilities are in line with safety codes and practices.

ExploConsult is under the direction of Bob Morhard, an internationally recognized explosives safety expert. After you engage ExploConsult, we will examine operations in detail to make sure your organization is using the best demonstrated explosives safety technology, procedures, and equipment to remain accident-free when handling explosives, propellants and pyrotechnic substances and articles. This examination may include a comprehensive audit of existing procedures and engineering drawings such as Piping and Instrument Diagrams (PID), Process Flow Diagrams (PFD) and Floor Plans (FP), and Quantity-Distance (QD) configurations to inhabited buildings, roads, and railways. An important outcome of using an explosives safety expert is helping your organization to develop the right mindset and culture to achieve the highest degree of explosives safety which will result in the very best in availability, maintainability, and reliability for your process.

Bob Morhard is an explosives safety expert, and in the USA has been recognized as a ‘Special Expert’ for the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) where he has served on the Technical Committee for Explosives Materials Code (NFPA 495) for more than 20 years. Bob is an expert on the United Nations Globally Harmonized Standards, the United Nations Manual of Tests and Criteria, and the United Nations Recommendations on the Transport of Dangerous Goods. ExploConsult routinely prepares Risk Identification and Risk Assessment programs that are fully compliant with the stringent requirements of the Department of Defence Contractors Safety Manual for Ammunition and Explosives (DoD 4145.26-M) regulations and guidelines, and similar laws and regulations in many other countries globally.

An explosives safety expert uses recognized tools to examine energetic materials safety that include Process Hazard Analysis (PHA), Hazards Analysis and Operability Studies (HAZOP) and Quantitative Risk Assessment (QRA). Bob Morhard is a trained HAZOP leader with experience in more than 100 HAZOPS related to explosives, propellants and pyrotechnic and ordnance processing, operations, handling, use and disposal.

An important tool used by an explosives safety expert is risk identification and risk assessment. The risk analysis may include such factors as: initiation or ignition sensitivity; net weight of explosives, propellants, and pyrotechnics; fragmentation and thermal output, velocity of detonation and burn rate, potential ignition and initiation sources; suppressive shields; personnel protective equipment and clothing; fire protection; electrical classification; controls related to static electricity and electromagnetic radiation and extraneous electricity; and industrial controls to avoid personnel exposure to dusts, fumes and mists.

In the event of an explosives accident or incident, it is important that everyone knows what to do and is properly trained to act professionally to immediately handle the matter. Bob Morhard has been a part of the development and implementation of more than 70 internal plant and external plant emergency action and safety plans for explosives, propellants, and pyrotechnics facilities.

As our explosives expert delivers each of these services, you and your employees will be equipped to behave cautiously but without fear as your facility undertakes its daily processes. Our consultants will help you to create and implement an infrastructure of safety for your facility that you will be able to continue to operate on your own for years to come. Overall, we design our services to help you succeed.

Because things change, explosives safety experts perform safety audits to check on your policies, processes, machinery, and practices to ensure that everything is still safety-focused and doesn’t need to be updated. In the latter case, our experts will gladly help you make your facility safe again. This analysis will aid in the development of written Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) and Manufacturing Instructions (MI), and checklists.

ExploConsult has the tools and experience necessary to assist your organization in developing a safety culture and the tools required to avoid the consequence of accidents and injuries, and legal costs and problems associated with explosives, propellants, and pyrotechnics incidents or accidents.

An important rule of an explosives safety expert that should be adopted for all explosives, propellants, and pyrotechnics operations is to Always limit the exposure to the minimum net explosives weight of explosives materials, to the minimum number of personnel for the minimum amount of time.

Let us now look at some of the measures that an explosives safety expert can use to assist your organization to identify and consequently avoid hazards, to assess risk, and to minimize the probability of, and potential consequences of an explosives, propellants, or pyrotechnics accident.

Minimize Net Explosives Weight

The quantities of explosives, propellants, and pyrotechnics and raw materials (including packaging) must always be kept as low as practical and appropriately separated. This includes the separation and segregation of waste.

Minimum Human Exposure

Whenever possible, use non-human attended or remote process equipment. There should be as few people as practical involved in the process. This includes barricades and suppressive shields. One often overlooked aspect is to have strict policies in place to restrict any non-process related people such as support staff, office staff and visitors.

Minimum Operations

Ideally there should either be only one operation per building or at least only one operation at any given time per building.

Minimize Risk

Risk Identification and Risk Assessment programs that involve process hazard analysis (PHA), hazards analysis and operability studies (HAZOP) and quantitative risk assessment (QRA) are required by law for manufacturing explosives, propellants, and pyrotechnics.

Explosives Safety Means No Harm to Anyone Ever.

Zero Explosives Accidents Over 48 Years

We have over 48 years of experience and a Zero Explosives Accidents record with the nearly 40 million metric tons of explosives and propellants produced on equipment we designed, installed, or inspected. You can trust our expertise to keep your company safe while using or handling explosives. Let an explosives expert from ExploConsult help you today.

Call us at +16103064637 today.

Professional Record

United Nations Committee of Experts on the Transport of Dangerous Goods and on the Globally Harmonized System of Classification and Labelling of Chemicals
Designated as a ‘Special Expert’ status by the USA National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) serving on the Technical Committee for Explosives Materials Code (NFPA 495) and Safe Havens for Vehicles Containing Explosives (NFPA 498) from 2000 to present date.
Extensive regulatory interface involving explosives materials in United Kingdom, Ireland, China, Europe, USA, Canada, Russia, Germany, France, Ireland, Sweden, Norway, Korea, Australia, Spain, Portugal, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Finland, Guyana, South Africa, Israel, Indonesia, Suriname, Lithuania, Dubai, Philippines, Vietnam, Brazil, Panama, Uzbekistan, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Mongolia, India, and New Zealand.
Provided subject matter expertise on explosives to the US Congress, US Department of Defense, US Army, US Navy, US Air Force, US agencies including the FBI, ATF, EPA, OSHA, and Transportation Security Agency, and the Department of Homeland Security. Provided briefings and subject matter expertise on explosives to select members of the white house staff on homeland security, select members of the US Senate, and select members of the US House of Representatives.
Experience in more than one hundred process hazard analysis (PHA), hazards analysis and operability studies (HAZOP), quantitative risk assessment (QRA) related to explosives, propellants, and pyrotechnics, and ordnance processing, operations, handling, use, and disposal.
Participated in the development and implementation of more than 70 internal plant and external plant emergency action and safety plans for explosives, propellants, and pyrotechnics facilities.
Since 1979, participated on many technical committees within the Institute of Makers of Explosives, United Nations, SAFEX International, Mine Safety and Health Administration, and many US and global regulatory groups dealing with explosives, propellants, and pyrotechnics.
Assessed and quantitatively analyzed fifty plus (50+) new unknown explosives substances and articles in accordance with the United Nations standards: The Recommendations on the Transport of Dangerous Goods and Manual of Tests and Criteria.

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