Whitepapers

Awarded Best Paper Award at the 2025 TEES Mary Kay O'Connor Process Safety Center-TAMU (MKO) Safety & Risk Conference Abstract November 2025 — Greg Pajak, aeSolutions Senior Specialist, ICA — A midstream facility implemented a systematic alarm rationalization program across two critical units, achieving unprecedented reductions in urgent alarm loads. Unit A reduced urgent alarms from 45% to 7% (84% reduction), while Unit B decreased from 62% to 5% (92% reduction). This paper

What is hiding under the radar of a plant SIS? Risk assessments define hazard consequences with assumed initiating event frequencies.

Advances in hydrogen safety are forthcoming and continue to evolve. A selection of case studies will be shared in which hypothetical indoor

When performing risk assessments on process equipment, are you reviewing machinery as well?

Data is needed to confidently claim a parameter value, starting with an assumed or generic value, and periodically updating that value with

While there is extensive testing and validation of hazards from flammable vapors, less information is available regarding flammable liquid mists. A method is suggested for reasonably estimating the nature and severity of flammable liquid mist hazards by applying published mist property correlations to model inputs and outputs in dispersion modeling software. Better estimating these hazards is important to properly evaluate what mitigations will be needed. One common high fla

Have you ever had the problem of having a perfectly functional BPCS * interlock that you know is highly failure immune, yet when it comes time for the Hazard Analysis, you may only take one credit? Unfortunately, for facilities following the IEC 61511 safety lifecycle, any interlock not designed according to the standard is limited to one risk reduction credit. This can make meeting extremely low total mitigated event likelihood targets (such as 1x10-5 or 1x10-6) exceedingl

STAMP ( Systems Theoretic Accident Model and Processes ) is a relatively new accident causality model based on systems theory. It draws its main tenets from systems thinking that (1) accidents can happen even when there has been no failure, (2) that interactions between components of the system create emergent properties that can lead to failure, and (3) it treats accidents as a control problem rather than a failure problem. STPA (Systems Theoretic Process Analysis) or colloq

Instrumentation, Reduction of Risk, Risk Assessment, Protection, Detection System, Alarms and Operator Interventions, Detector, Gas Detecti

Is our industry addressing the problems facing it today? We idealize infinitesimally small event rates for highly catastrophic hazards, yet are we any safer? Have we solved the world’s problems? Layers of protection analysis (LOPA) drives hazardous event rates to 10-4 per year or less, yet industry is still experiencing several disastrous events per year. If one estimates 3,000 operating units worldwide and industry experiences approximately 3 major incidents per year, the tr

This paper proposes a combined approach of discussing the cognitive psychology behind System 1 and System 2 thinking, the types of heuristic

Having a working knowledge of these five tools will improve a PHA‐LOPA facilitator’s awareness and ability to better evaluate human error re

Examples of the different types of graphic diagrams, methods in which the diagrams were utilized, and the benefits that each provided in th

To develop the Fire and Gas system requirements needed by industry, we first needed to understand the regulatory requirements, applicable in

by Richard E. Hanner & aeSolutions Technical Team There are many critical activities and decisions that take place prior to and during the Safety Integrity Level (SIL) Verification and other Conceptual Design phases of projects conforming to ISA84 & ISA/IEC 61511. These activities and decisions introduce either opportunities to optimize, or obstacles that impede project flow, depending when and how these decisions are managed. Implementing Safety Instrumented System (SIS) pr

Common sources of systematic failures and preventative or mitigative measures to prevent their occurrence are presented.

Bayes’ Theorem is sorely missing from the toolbox of Process Safety practitioners. This paper will introduce Bayes’ Theorem to the reader an

There are many devices (sensors, logic solvers and final elements) used in safety instrumented systems  that are independently certified for use in safety applications to different safety integrity levels (SIL). There is considerable debate however whether fire and gas system hardware should have SIL ratings at all. Vendors are naturally interested in promoting independently certified hardware in order to differentiate their products. Considering the differences between safet

Functional safety engineers follow the ISA/IEC 61511 standard and perform calculations based on random hardware failures. These result in...

by aeSolutions Technical Team This paper will discuss how quantitative methods can be utilized to select the appropriate Safety Integrity Level associated with Burner Management Systems. Identifying the required amount of risk reduction is extremely important especially when evaluating existing legacy Burner Management Systems. Selection of an overly conservative Safety Integrity Level can have significant cost impacts. These costs will either be associated with increased Sa

This paper will discuss the issues, decisions, and challenges encountered when attempting to initially apply the concepts of the Safety Life

This paper discusses the identification, selection, implementation and management of Non-SIF IPLs through the process lifecycle.

Implementing a Safety Instrumented Burner Management (SI‐BMS) can be challenging, costly, and time consuming. Simply identifying design shor

Achieving Safety Integrity Level (SIL) targets can be difficult when proof test intervals approach turnaround intervals of five years or mor

This paper will cover: the development of a SIS front end loading package the project cost savings realized attributed to following the saf

by aeSolutions Technical Team ​ A two‐prong templatized approach to multiple brownfield burner management system upgrades can result in significant cost savings. The first step requires coming up with an equivalent design for the safety instrumented burner management system following the ISA 84 safety lifecycle , as allowed in current NFPA standards. The second step utilizes a templatization approach for multiple units with common functionality that will allow an organizatio

‘Evergreen’ and ‘lifecycle’ have become two common buzz words in our industry. They are thrown around in a variety of topics, processes, and

Incorporate quantitative Human Factors into a SIL analysis. Representative operating units at various stages of maturity in human factors an

Effective Process Hazard Analysis (PHA) facilitators combine soft skills with technical knowledge to guide PHA teams through a thorough iden

Introduction to Using RAGAGEP for Overpressure Risk Mitigation

A systematic database approach can be used to design, develop and test a Safety Instrumented System (SIS) using methodologies that are in co

Are random hardware failures the only thing that cause a safety instrumented function (SIF) to fail? What if our assumptions are wrong? What