Inspired by “Conducting an Effective Functional Safety Assessment” presented at 2019 ISA PIC 2019—Process Industry Conference. by Greg Hardin Much has been written about the functional safety assessment (FSA) stages, the makeup of the team, and the types of documents that should be reviewed. Yet what might go wrong with an FSA, and what might you do to ensure that an FSA runs smoothly? Would you rather learn from the mistakes of others, or make them all yourself? It’s easier

Inspired by “Conducting an Effective Functional Safety Assessment” presented at 2019 ISA PIC 2019—Process Industry Conference. by Greg Hardin The ISA/IEC 61511 standard defines a functional safety assessment as [an] “investigation, based on evidence, to judge the functional safety achieved by one or more safety instrumented systems and/or other protection layers.” The standard describes five stages where functional safety assessments may be performed: After the hazard and ris

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 hardware and software design, go