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Functional Safety & Bayesian Networks Functional safety engineers fol low the ISA/IEC 61511 standard & perform calculations based on random hardware failures. These result in low failure probabilities, which are then combined with similarly low failure probabilities for other safety layers, to show that the overall probability of an accident is extremely low (e.g., 1E-5/yr). Unfortunately, such numbers are based on frequentist assumptions and cannot be proven. Looking at act

What might go wrong with an FSA, and what might you do to ensure that an FSA runs smoothly?

Inspired by “Conducting an Effective Functional Safety Assessment” presented at 2019 ISA PIC 2019—Process Industry Conference. by Greg...

Industry uses many numbers in process safety associated with predicting the likelihood of rare, catastrophic events (e.g., failure rates, de

Updated April 2026 - It is commonly touted that once a plant rationalizes their alarms , they have completed the alarm management lifecycle. Nothing could be further from the truth. So what can an organization do to keep the alarm lifecycle alive and evergreen? Alarm management is the collection of processes and practices for determining, documenting, designing, operating, monitoring, and maintaining alarm systems. It is characterized by design principles including hardwar

A hazard scenario-based, drill-down audit can uncover systematic issues brewing beneath the surface not often uncovered from a...

Updated November 2024 — Layer of Protection Analysis (LOPA) has become an i mportant tool used in industry, often in conjunction with...