SAFER Background Information

SAFER Systems has a colorful history in the Chemical Industry. The company was established in 1978 as Form and Substance, Inc. In the early 1980’s an engineer from Diamond Shamrock perceived from a demonstration of the environmental work being done by Form and Substance that the modeling technique could be applied to chemicals. Building on this idea, the company started work on a basic emergency response modeling system. By 1981, the company developed a rudimentary product based on a WICAT 150WS computer (a screaming 8 Mhz multi-bus system with 256k memory and a whopper 10 Mbyte drive). SAFER developed the entire program in FORTRAN 77 including all of the graphic routines. The name of the company changed to SAFER Emergency Systems, INC. A Slipstream Motor home was purchased and the owners drove the entire Gulf Coast demonstrating the SAFER system. In those days, SAFER stood for Systematic Approach For Emergency Response. The motor home was christened MERV for Mobil Emergency Response Vehicle. In 1982, the first commercial SAFER System was installed in a chlor-alkali plant in Houston, TX. The companies with very forward thinkers started to invest in this technology and helped assure the early survival of SAFER. In December of 1984, the tragic Bhopal incident occurred. This raised the bar on acceptable practices to protect plant staff and communities. SAFER was uniquely positioned to fill the need created by Bhopal. All through 1985, SAFER added technical staff to the company and subsequently grew from 3 people to 17. Installations occurred both domestically and internationally. Our first International installation was SADAF in Saudi Arabia and the next week we installed General Electric in Bergen Op Zoom. During 1985 we started to see a need for an analytical tool, a partner product to our emergency response application. We realized our modeling work from the SAFER System was perfect for this. By February of 1986, TRACE was born. TRACE stood for Toxic Release Analysis of Chemical Emissions. It was developed for DOS and the commercially viable version was released in May of 1986.

All of the late 1980’s were a great time at SAFER. The marketplace was new in the United States and the business grew at a rapid rate. By late 1987, the E.I. DuPont de Nemours Company decided to acquire SAFER. They had started a business unit that would focus on environmental and safety excellence with the objective to market their skills outside of DuPont. In early 1988, SAFER technology was sold to DuPont. The company was renamed ChemoDyanamics, Inc. We worked in support of the technology.

By late 1988, the owner of Chemodynamics decided to sell the entire company to DuPont and leave the organization. This caused the name to change again to DuPont SAFER Emergency Systems, INC. We were now a wholly owned subsidiary of DuPont and their only software business.

SAFER continued to evolve the models, graphics, and capabilities of the system. Working successfully with DuPont Engineering, the models improved their accuracy and acceptance. By this time we now had some competition with ALOHA, CHARM, and MIDAS. With the advent of the Clean Air Act, the industry was starting to mature, more people understood dispersion modeling, and customers were becoming savvier towards computers and applications. Overall, we started to mature as a company and a product, developing our own niche in the safety and environmental industry.

We moved from WICAT systems to Digital VAX system computer platform in 1989. This was our first major platform change. The system was robust and we enjoyed the solid performance of the VAX VMS operating system. Unfortunately, the IBM PC was on the horizon and the cost of a VAX system made it difficult for Digital to compete.

In early 1990, SAFER with DuPont engineering guidance released SAFEPLAN, a program that would aid with process risk assessment. SAFEPLAN remained with DuPont after the sale of SAFER.

The VAX operating system was expensive and our customers wanted more economical hardware solutions. We ported the software to IBM DOS. The program was robust and ran the bulk of our customer systems in from 1991 to 1998. All SAFER software using DOS was discontinued during the Y2K transition.

Wanting to market to a wider segment than simply emergency management, DuPont changed the company name to DuPont SAFER Systems, Inc. in 1994. We also developed a full IBM OS/2 version which was demonstrated at the May 1995 User Meeting just in time for Microsoft Windows 95 and NT to take over. This Operating System battle caused SAFER to recode the entire product to Windows which showed up as a significant delay in development and delivery.

DuPont decided to divest itself of SAFER in 1996. In February 1997, the company was acquired by Don Soenen.  The company was named SAFER Systems, L.L.C. In May of 1998 and all of our programs were migrated to the Microsoft Windows platform of operating systems.

In October of 1999, SAFER in a joint development with BNSF introduced a new product and development, SAFER’s System for Transportation Accident Response or STAR.  We continue to work with all class 1 railroads and the Center for Toxicology and Health in Little Rock to evolve this technology as a solid response tool for the transportation industry.

In 2000 we introduce liquid multi-component modeling.  This allowed evaluation for mixtures up to 10 components.  The entire stream or a single component could be evaluated.  This was driven by our Petrochemical, refining, and Railroad customers.

June of 2002 we released Version 9.0 which included ground breaking technology for release rate estimation.  SAFER was awarded a U.S Patent for this and Patent applications were generated world wide.  We adopted Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technology vastly improving the accuracy, coordinate systems, and mapping visualization.  We partnered with GE in Europe and Gastronics to evaluate and test these new designs.

In 2003 we added particulate modeling to TRACE.  This effort is the beginning steps to include a variety of models that require this transport mechanism.   Currently, we have continued to evolve our capabilities using particulate models.

September of 2003 SAFER was sold to a private group of investors.  The investors include SAFER management as well as individuals who currently work with the Chemical Industry and recognize the significance of our work.  

In late 2004 SAFER formed a business alliance with RAE Systems.  RAE Systems is a leading manufacture of portable monitoring systems that can include GPS information and be wirelessly deployed.  RAE Systems will market a product specifically designed for their monitoring strengths called PlumeRAE.   Their focus is the HAZMAT environment.

SAFER continues to evolve and grow. We have opened successful offices in London and Houston. SAFER continued to expand its presence with the use of Agents throughout the world. We clearly seek out the best-in-class business partners to assure our products are utilizing the finest available technologies.

The chemical and transportation industries have adopted SAFER as a solid product and recognize our company for dispersion modeling and associated applications. We are internationally recognized with systems in over 20 countries. Our software programs exists in nine languages. Many of our customers have used our software around the clock for over 20 years. We continue to aggressively design and develop the best software for our customers and are proud of our contribution to the industry.