Perhaps you have installed safety systems which date from the 1990’s or early turn of this century. If so, you might be wondering whether you need to follow IEC 61511 edition 2 for Safety Integrity Level (SIL) conformance?If your safety system installation pre-dates 2004 then you are highly unlikely to have experienced the full requirements […]
How do you get valued staff and contractors to engage with Process Safety, Functional Safety and similar “tricky” subjects? Send them on a training course or ask them to take some online training? How about both? An online plus classroom experience might just be the answer to getting a step-change in safety culture in your […]
The headline, extracted from a popular song lyric*, uses the double-negative “don’t need no”, quite intentionally – to help emphasize a point. Whatever the song writer meant I’ll leave to others to decipher, but for my purposes hopefully it will get attention. * The lyric “We don’t need no education” is extracted from Pink Floyd’s “Another […]
The recently updated process sector safety instrumented system (SIS) standard IEC 61511 now requires that a “security risk assessment is carried out to identify security vulnerabilities of the SIS” [1]. But how should such an assessment be approached, and what can you do to prepare for it?There have been well publicized examples of cyber-security breaches […]
Read on to see the software buyer’s guide table…a comparison of 4 cloud-based software solutions. This blog will will look at the main reasons why using such software is better than many traditional approaches, which companies are working in the domain, and the questions you should ask before you choose a solution.The safety life-cycle was […]
Without effective functional safety assessment and audit, you may never know whether your safety system will perform when it is really needed. That is perhaps a bold statement, but read on if you think you disagree… Automated systems have been used in safety applications now for a few decades. As a result we should have some […]
For the third blog of this series, the focus is on proof testing. This article will look at what proof testing is, why it’s needed, and give some outline examples of proof test procedure requirements. It will also introduce some issues I’ve personally experienced during audits and assessments of proof test procedures in the process industry […]
Operation and maintenance procedures for Safety Instrumented Systems (SIS) will vary from company to company. However, there are some specific requirements that need to be covered for safe continued operation. The first blog on this topic discussed general operation and maintenance (O&M) requirements for sustaining the integrity of a SIS. This second article discusses the requirements […]
How do you ensure a Safety Instrumented System in operation will maintain its original design integrity for a lifetime of 15+ years? The IEC 61511 (2016) safety life-cycle provides some brief guidance for operation and maintenance of a safety instrumented system (SIS) in clause 16. The stated objectives are to ensure that the validated system’s safety […]
The process sector standard IEC 61511 is aimed at applications where instrumented systems are used for risk reduction in the process industry sector – including applications in chemicals, oil and gas, pulp and paper, pharmaceutical manufacturing, food and beverage, and non-nuclear power generation. Reduction of risk can be applied in the context of people, the […]