EXPERIENCE
Having your Area Classification and Electrical Engineering work done at the big consulting companies may have been costing you more for less. (Just look where Mr. Grzyb has previously worked). It is quite feasible that your work may have been done my Mr. Grzyb previously when he worked at some of these big players, but you might have been paying for the “Big Consultant Name” and “Big Consultant Overhead”. It’s also true that you may have paid for junior staff to be trained on your budget too. Some of those “blended rates” never really tell you who is working on your stuff.
When Area Classification is done by someone who doesn’t do it on a regular basis they may apply “rule of thumb methods” or cut and paste diagrams from whatever code or document they might have handy. Wouldn’t it be better to hire someone who does Area Classification on a regular basis and knows it well?
In fact, a cookie cutter approach to Area Classification can cost you a lot of extra money. Not in the fee charged but the costs incurred meeting overzealous requirements. An inexperienced or cautious designer may “overclassify” or “blanket classify” an entire plant or area, applying a “more is better approach”. This might be considered “safe and conservative” but can be very expensive for the end user. If you really need a small area around a particular process to be classified, why would you spend five times the amount on explosion proof equipment and installation methods for the rest of the area! Craziness! It would be like buying your entire company workforce full personal protective equipment even if they never set foot in the field. Better yet, making them all wear it every day!
Too large of a Classified Area can create installation apathy. A contractor doing three hundred poured explosion proof seals all over a plant can get careless thinking that they aren’t really needed anyway. When in fact a smaller, less expensive, careful effort on 30 or so required seals in the critical area might provide better protection of your investment.
Applying the right Area Classification to only the right areas is cost effective.
Something else that happens in “Blanket Classified” plants is end user apathy. Some Classifications are so big they encompass plant roadways. It is inappropriate to drive vehicles in Classified Areas! Hot Exhaust manifolds and electrical systems on vehicles are not suitable for Classified Areas. What good is having an Area Classification in place that everyone ignores? Answer: NOTHING.
Letting plant personnel decide how close to drive their vehicle to a process that is classified is DANGEROUS.