Process Safety Management
At aeSolutions, we believe the greatest influence over any project’s success comes from teaming specialized personnel with our clients’ needs at the beginning – long before actual implementation begins.
As a supplier of complete process safety and risk management solutions, we pride ourselves on providing engineers from industry with design, maintenance, operating, and process safety backgrounds. Our specialists understand how plants operate because they have actually worked in covered processes and facilities.
Our unequaled combination of standards and committee work, our formal training, and our extensive process safety and risk management experience mean we’re uniquely qualified to execute your project.

Featured Stories
Process Safety & Risk Management Program Services
Process Safety Management/Risk Management Plan (PSM/RMP) Program Development & Implementation
Compliance Auditing (PSM, RMP, and Risk Based Process Safety (RBPS))
Many companies have been required by PSM and/or RMP to audit their process safety performance for the last decade. aeSolutions understands that our clients are looking for more than a yes/no evaluation of the regulatory requirements. When properly executed, auditing provides you with the data needed to make informed decisions toward continuous improvement. We provide a cross functional team of auditors that understand the interrelationships of the process safety and risk management elements to perform this essential part of the process safety lifecycle.
ISA 61511 Gap Assessment
At aeSolutions, the combination of our Process Safety and Safety Instrumented Systems Engineering and Automation delivery capabilities enables us to perform a very thorough and pragmatic ISA84/IEC 61511 Gap Assessment. Our assessment team will evaluate your existing practices against the ISA-84.00.01-2004 (IEC 61511-Mod) standard and applicable elements from the OSHA's PSM Standard, 29 CFR 1910.119. These standards are recognized and generally accepted good engineering practice (RAGAGEP) for the design and maintenance of safety instrumented systems. Our assessment team is experienced in the development and implementation of functional safety management systems and proficient in the technical execution of the engineering work products. Our lead gap assessors are professional engineers and/or certified functional safety experts that are detailed in their evaluations of procedures, documentation and practices in place. They are valued for their ability to work with our clients to identify gaps or areas for continuous improvement and provide sustainable recommendations for gap closure.
Management of Change (MOC) Program Development & Implementation
Independent Protection Layer (IPL) Validation
When applying protection layers to a LOPA scenario, it is important to validate these layers against the six requirements for all IPLs; specific, independent, dependable, auditable, secure, and field verified. By performing and documenting how IPLs perform for each of these criteria, requirement gaps can be identified and closed. IPL validation will also bolster the auditability of the IPLs by providing information to confirm that an IPL is performing at the level required by the LOPA applied credit. aeSolutions can provide you with a standard validation form, training and field support, or work with you to customize the validation effort to be more specific to your corporate IPL requirements.
Alarm Management
aeSolutions can supply expertise for all stages of alarm management including lifecycle consulting for philosophy development, gap assessment of current alarm philosophy, alarm management and rationalization training, and facilitation of alarm rationalizations.
Mechanical Integrity Program Development & Implementation
Hazard Assessment Services
Process Hazard Analysis (PHA)
Layers of Protection Analysis (LOPA)
LOPA is a semi-quantitative method of evaluating process safety risk to a facility. The LOPA methodology considers higher consequence scenarios identified in the Process Hazard Analysis to ensure proper safeguards, or Independent Protection Layers (IPLs), are in place to reduce risk to a tolerable level. aeSolutions will lead your LOPA team through this evaluation and provide final deliverables including LOPA study worksheets, IPL list, and Safety Integrity Level (SIL) target assignments.
Independent Protection Layer (IPL) and Safety Integrity Level (SIL) Selection
In certain cases, an additional and separate study beyond a LOPA is required to further define and refine selected IPLs. This may be the case when PHA/ LOPA are performed together, not providing adequate time for IPL discussion. If a process or Unit has never undergone a LOPA, then the IPL Select and Define activity may be required. In any case, aeSolutions will facilitate the IPL Select Team meeting and provide deliverables including IPL list and SIL target assignments. IPL Select and Define requires a unique skill set encompassing PHA facilitation experience coupled with IPL and SIS knowledge. aeSolutions has the experts to handle this task.
Facility Siting Analysis
A Facility Siting Analysis is intended to evaluate the potential hazards and consequences of uncontrolled releases of flammable and toxic substances; to assess their potential for injuring the occupants of fixed and temporary structures on or offsite; to identify existing safeguards; and to determine measures to reduce the risk posed by these potential events. aeSolutions has trained facilitators to execute the hazard recognition and risk reduction process and experienced modelers that apply the appropriate methodology in line with API 752/753 and industry best management practices for Facility Siting. We provide results that allow your site leadership team to allocate resources more effectively to minimize facility siting risks.
Dispersion & Consequence Modeling
Consequence modeling is used to predict the toxic, flammable, or explosive impacts from the release of chemicals and their dispersion to the environment. aeSolutions has expertise in performing consequence modeling for a variety of industries and uses this base of knowledge to provide guidance on how to select release scenarios and determine appropriate endpoints. Our project execution includes data collection, modeling, interpretation of the model output, and presentation of meaningful results in a format our clients can use to better understand their identified risks.
Quantitative Risk Assessment (QRA)
A QRA is a specialized approach to assess high consequence LOPA scenarios with large risk gaps to close. Further "pencil-sharpening" in the QRA will verify the severity of the scenario through consequence modeling, as well as the frequency of the scenario through fault tree modelling. Often conservative assumptions made in LOPA are revealed in QRA, which makes the solution to gap closure more practical. QRA will handle conditional dependence among IPL(s) and the initiating cause(s). aeSolutions utilizes commercially available software tools, along with in-house expertise, to facilitate QRAs.
Human Factors & Human Error Analysis
For a Quantitative Risk Assessment involving a significant human error component as an input, a Human Reliability Analysis (HRA) may be needed to bring the analysis of the input in-line with the level of rigor required for a QRA. HRA will provide qualitative insight to the human factors issues related to the error, and also provide a more accurate quantitative assessment than is found in standard LOPA tables for human performance credits. The ability to model conditional dependence among operator tasks, as well as model potential human recovery factors from errors, makes the HRA a valuable tool. For a typical HRA, a standard operating procedure (SOP) is broken down into discrete tasks. Interviews with Operations are conducted, known as a "talk-through," as well as a plant "walk-through" which covers the equipment of concern from the SOP. PSFs (Performance Shaping Factors) related to each task are discovered. Dependencies among tasks are estimated. Each of these will influence the HEP (Human Error Probability) for each task. Each task is to be modelled as a success or failure. An HRA Event Tree is constructed, each identified task being a branch in the tree, and then solved; the output of which is typically an input to a QRA. aeSolutions has the Human Factors Reliability Experts to handle this task.
Electrical Area Classification
Facilities often have process or equipment changes which result in inaccurate drawings or the drawings may have been lost since the process was first built. aeSolutions provides electrical area classification studies for process facilities after equipment installation to document the following:
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Equipment identification -
Equipment location -
Electrical area classification drawings -
Site General Arrangements (G&As) compliant to API 500 and NEC article 500 -
Equipment drawings
Combustible Dust Assessment
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Appropriate effective housekeeping -
Proper application and use of PPE -
Installation of proper electrically classified equipment -
Properly designed engineering controls for explosion venting on dust collection equipment -
Critical relief devices properly maintained -
Adequate maintenance -
Adequate Hot Work permitting -
Means to dissipate static electricity such as bonding and grounding -
Employee training and awareness of risks associated with combustible dust
aeShield Software
aeShield® automatically maintains the complex relationships among the risk reduction performance, design verification calculations, inspection and test plans for integrity management, and actual plant historical data. aeShield® provides real time alerts and reporting on the process safety health of a single safety loop, a full process area or across an entire multi-site enterprise.
aeSolutions is a licensed reseller of aeShield® Safety Lifecycle Management software suite, a comprehensive platform for automating the safety lifecycle in compliance with ISA84.00.01/IEC 61511 and the related requirements of OSHA 1910.119.
Process Safety & Risk
Management Program Services
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Process Safety Management/Risk Management Plan (PSM/RMP) Program Development & Implementation
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Compliance Auditing (PSM, RMP, and Risk Based Process Safety (RBPS))
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ISA 61511 Gap Assessment
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Independent Protection Layer (IPL) Validation
Hazard Assessment Services
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Process Hazard Analysis (PHA)
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Layers of Protection Analysis (LOPA)
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Facility Siting Analysis
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Dispersion & Consequence Modeling
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Independent Protection Layer (IPL) and Safety Integrity Level (SIL) Selection