December 3, 2019
HOUSTON – Dec. 3, 2019 – UL, a leading global safety science company, has officially opened a new hazardous locations customer service center at 4702 North Sam Houston Parkway, Suite #100 in Houston. The new facility, a first for UL in Houston, offers a collaborative safety service solution for the upstream, midstream and downstream oil and gas industry.
The hazardous locations industry is continually challenged to design, produce and operate safe, reliable, energy efficient and innovative products for use in potentially explosive atmospheres. In the Greater Houston area, a major chemical incident occurs once every six weeks1. Recognizing the critical needs of the industry, UL helps prevent ignition source fires with risk management. The customer service center offers local expertise for education, advisory services, equipment testing and certification. UL’s new customer service center helps manufacturers, system integrators and asset owners of equipment to better serve that sector from the globally strategic location in Houston.
Classified by the likelihood of an ignitable concentration of combustible material being present in the manufacturing process, hazardous locations have a higher risk of explosion or fire hazards due to the presence of flammable gases, flammable or combustible liquid-produced vapors, combustible dusts, and ignitable fibers or flyings. To address these increased risks, UL works with manufacturers to test and certify equipment used in hazardous locations to advance safe working and production conditions.
“The facility complements our current testing and certification services by providing stakeholders solutions locally,” said Milan Dotlich, Europe and Americas vice president of Energy and Power Technologies at UL. “UL is committed to supporting our customers mitigate explosion risks in hazardous locations and supply chain risk with our focus on helping to prevent ignition source fires. We also help them reduce time to market for their products, systems and solutions.”
Serving stakeholders across the supply chain, the new UL hazardous locations customer service center will further fuel UL’s global footprint to help customers prevent incidents and safely advance innovation. Utilizing its global network of hazardous locations technical experts and state-of-the-art facilities, along with longstanding relationships with regulatory authorities, partner laboratories and industry technical leaders, UL has the ability to support clients with issues from ideation through to certification and installation.
“Navigating the complex landscape of global hazardous locations certifications is a challenge. UL is actively engaged in the global standards writing process and participates in more than 50 hazardous locations technical committees,” Dotlich said. “With over 100 years of global HazLoc knowledge, we truly have our finger on the pulse of the industry and want to share our expertise with oil and gas customers in Houston.”
To learn more, register to attend one or more monthly lunch and learns at our new Houston facility where UL hazardous locations experts will share their expertise on a variety of topics such as NEC 2020 changes, global market access, functional safety and intrinsic safety design. Or visit UL.com/Houston.
1Houston Chronicle – July 31, 2019: https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/ExxonMobil-s-Baytown-fire-the-latest-in-a-14270558.php
About UL
UL helps create a better world by applying science to solve safety, security and sustainability challenges. We empower trust by enabling the safe adoption of innovative new products and technologies. Everyone at UL shares a passion to make the world a safer place. All of our work, from independent research and standards development, to testing and certification, to providing analytical and digital solutions, helps improve global well-being. Businesses, industries, governments, regulatory authorities and the public put their trust in us so they can make smarter decisions. To learn more, visit UL.com.