functional safety of a stationary fuel cell power system
March 17, 2022
Jon Keswick, CFSE

Functional safety and fuel cells may seem to have little cross-over on first glance. However,  stationary fuel cell safety standard IEC 62282-3-100 requires a written hazard and risk assessment, and fuel cell functional safety design principles. Such assessments may not seem challenging at first, but certain early decisions are critical Read More

October 8, 2021
Jon Keswick, CFSE

Introduction Safety Integrity Level, SIL Calculation is necessary when a Safety Instrumented Systems (SIS) is one of the critical independent protection layers for process safety. Applications of SIS include automated isolation, trips or interlocks found commonly in oil & gas upstream, refining, chemical and pharmaceutical production. Get the correct inputs Read More

sil verification
May 6, 2021
Stephen Burke, CFSE

SIL Verification calculations for a Safety Instrumented Function (SIF) with Safety Integrity Level (SIL) performance requirement are standard in the process industry these days. You will find examples in both the IEC 61508 and IEC 61511 standards and Functional Safety (FS) training courses like those available on this site. There Read More

How to select a safety PLC
March 5, 2021
Jon Keswick, CFSE

When it comes to implementing safety instrumented systems (SIS) to comply with functional safety standard IEC 61511, the safety PLC is a pivotal system to specify. So, what are the key questions that you need to ask if choosing a new system supplier? Read more here. What is the difference between standard Read More

eFunctionalSafety teaches courses about safety instrumented systems
October 7, 2020
Jon Keswick, CFSE

Suppose your staff and contractors need to get up to speed with improving IEC 61511 functional safety competence for safety instrumented systems. If that's the case, this is the right blog for you. Developed over the past seven years, we've delivered many years of experience to hundreds of professionals with Read More

What is hardware fault tolerance - HFT
September 3, 2020
Jon Keswick, CFSE

You may not know or care much about Hardware Fault Tolerance (HFT) unless you're working in a hazardous industry with Safety Integrity Level *SIL requirements.  However, just like the multiple safety systems in your motor vehicle, systems used for protecting hazardous process plants are often built with intentional redundancy, both Read More

Safety Instrumented Function - SIF Design
July 28, 2020
Jon Keswick, CFSE

Like any many other safety engineering activities, safety instrumented function design usually involves several repeated rounds of activity. Nevertheless, there are broadly five key steps involved. A SIF gets specified as an automated independent protection layer (IPL), often as the result of a safety integrity level (SIL) target-setting exercise, also Read More

What is MTBF in relation to SIL
July 8, 2020
Jon Keswick, CFSE

Are the terms "Mean Time Between Failures" (MTBF) and "Safety Integrity Level" (SIL) related to each other? Some would think not but read on if you'd like to discover if that's true. MTBF Equipment suppliers have been providing MTBF data for their electrical and electronic equipment for decades. The base Read More

SIF Proof Testing
June 4, 2020
Jon Keswick, CFSE

Ever wondered how to proof test a safety instrumented system?  Proof test is a term that was first coined in the original IEC 61511 standard (functional safety - safety instrumented systems for the process industry sector). Unlike regular testing to see if a system performs as required by a specification, Read More