The Internal Operations Plan is an operational decision-aid tool that can be used in-house and by External Emergency Services if and when a disaster occurs.

Regulatory References

The organisation of a POI can be made compulsory by the regulation according to article R.512-29 of the French Environmental Code (Installation Classified for Environmental protection (ICPE) subject to authorisation with constraints, any other installation further to a decision by the Prefecture and certain special installations such as warehouses with more than 50,000 sq. m. of floor space).

An Internal Operations Plan describes the organisational rules, the facilities set up and available on an industrial site to minimise the consequences of a potentially major disaster for people, the environment and property.

The "Internal Operations Plan" is drafted using a deliberately deterministic logic. It takes as its basic assumption the occurrence of events liable to lead to accidents of the "upper-bound scenario" type.

The Internal Operations Plan is not designed to be exhaustive in terms of either its structure or its logic. It is not designed to provide succinct technical and organisational solutions to all the accidents liable to occur on a site. A fastidious approach of that kind would result in a document that is lengthy to draft, update and above all use when managing a crisis.

The Internal Operations Plan therefore focuses on controlling accidents that are liable to occur that are both "significant and representative". The process therefore involves determining the main families of hazards which can occur: fire, explosion, spills of liquid products, atmospheric dispersion of toxic substances, etc...

For each of these accidents, the following are defined :

• the methods for detecting the accidents,
• the means and organisation to be implemented in order to eliminate or limit the accident (extinction, containment, etc.),
• possible extensions of the accident to other installations (including so-called "domino" effects).

CNPP services :

The support provided by the CNPP is applied in two main phases :

1. Defining and validating the framework for the document
2. Defining the organisation of crisis management

Practical exercises and tests in using the POI can be organised.

Contact :

Tel : +33 (0)2.32.53.63.50

Fax : +33 (0)2.32.53.73.84

E-mail : audit.conseil@cnpp.com