Changing Obsolete Gas Station Design

The Ukrainian Oil & Gas Association has conducted a meeting of the Committee for Safety, Operation and Building, which was attended both by representatives of member-companies of the industrial association and private design organisations.

The agenda of the meeting included review of the Draft State Building Standards for Planning and Development of Territories, in particular the Section No. 10 of the Draft that includes the sub-section Gas Stations for Cars. Approval of a new version of State Building Standards (SBS) should allow changing obsolete approaches to urban construction by bringing them in line with modern requirements and European practice.

Unfortunately, the basic scientific and technical organisations assigned with the task to draft this document by the government back in 2015 have applied a formal approach regarding the gas station designs. They automatically transferred to the new Draft requirements from the old standards adopted back in 2001 disregarding recent construction technologies and availability of modern equipment. Particularly, they did not take into account the urban density conditions, when construction of gas stations in the future according to requirements to fire-protection distances between the gas stations and residential houses, public buildings and constructions, and engineering networks would not be possible.

That was why, members of the Association have designed their own proposals based on the European experience and submitted them to the Hyprograd SE for the following discussion with representatives of the State Emergency Service, labour safety, environmental and health inspection authorities. We assume, that agreeing on all those proposals might take another 2~3 months, and the documents may be accepted as a basis for consideration in the first quarter of 2018.