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'''Dr R Venugopal, Deputy Chief Controller of Explosives, PESO, Govt. Of India'''

Dr. R.Venugopal holds a PhD  in Chemical Engineering and is presently   working as Dy.Chief Controller of Explosives, Ernakulam.

Dr. Venugopal served  in various statutory departments in State and Central Governments. He had served  as Inspector of  Factories and Boilers for close to a decade in Kerala and since 1998 he is in the Indian Petroleum & Explosives Safety Service (IPESS)  with the Petroleum and Explosives Safety Organisation (PESO), Government of India.

He had conducted Several Comprehensive Safety Audits in Refineries, Oil Installations LPG bottling plants, Cross country Pipe lines, Toxic and flammable compressed gas Plants, Non-Toxic Non-flammable gas installations and Explosives Factories.

He has investigated several industrial, explosive accidents involving high explosives, fireworks, compressed gases, gas cylinders and petroleum across India. Some of the worst explosives accidents in the recent history he investigated as member of the enquiry commission under Govt of India are THE OM SAKTI FIREWORKS FACTORY ACCIDENT at SIVAKASI and the Paravoor temple accident in Kollam, Kerala where 108 people were killed and 400 injured.

In 2013, he initiated the Safety Awareness Week, (SAW) in the fireworks hub of India, Sivakasi when the rate of accident was 63 accidents/year. This programme reached out to all 670 Fireworks Manufacturing units in Sivakasi and enrolling  1,28,000 employees in fireworks industry in four districts of Tamil Nadu. He has been credited with bringing down human casualties in Sivakasi fireworks manufacturing factories in 2013 and 2014. This programme along with the the initiative “DRIVE TO ZERO ACCIDENTS ‘’ brought down the fireworks accidents in Sivakasi to ZERO in 2014.

His passion for creating safety awareness is evident in the benchmarked programmes he designed and executed which include national and international safety conferences like “NDT 2006”, “Petrosafe 2007”, “Pyrotech 2008”, SAW 2013, Pyrotech2013, OPEX 2016 , STOhP 2016 and the first pipeline safety conference in India( PSC 2018). .

In his tenure as Chairman of the IIChE, Kochi Regional Centre, the Chapter received the best chapter awards in both years. During his tenure the IIChE Kochi Regional Centre’s instituted the “Out Standing Chemical Engineer Awards” and premier programmes like “Unnikrishnan Memorial Talk” and “Distinguished Lecture Programme (DLP)”.

Dr. Venugopal's “Chemical Engineers Reference Manual” published by the Indian Institute of Chemical Engineers, is one of the most sought-after manual amongst chemical engineers. He has published 21 International / National Papers in various conferences, Seminars and workshops.