How to monitor your safety instrumented system performance
Andy YamLevel 2, Tower A, 112 Talavera Road, Macquarie Park, NSW 2113, Australia. Email: andy.yam@au.yokogawa.com
The APPEA Journal 58(2) 761-764 https://doi.org/10.1071/AJ17120
Accepted: 2 March 2018 Published: 28 May 2018
Abstract
With the impending release of Edition 2 of the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) Standard 61511 in Australia, it is timely to revisit the topic of safety instrumented system (SIS) performance monitoring. Operators need to monitor the performance of their SISs to ensure that design assumptions are correct. Any incorrect assumption or error introduced during operation can result in an unsafe plant situation. Questions to consider include: how do operators know their plants are adequately protected; are protection systems performing as required, and do operators need to re-assess the safety of their plant’s process vis-à-vis the implemented safety instrumented systems; what are end-user obligations; how and is it possible to meet these obligations; and what additional requirements are there, and how much more prescriptive is Edition 2?
If any of the above questions are of concern, or if plant personnel are aware of their obligation to maintain and monitor the SIS during operations but are still not 100% sure if they are on the right track or need to do more, then this paper will prove useful.
In addition to knowing all the requirements to comply, actual implementation and maintenance of a program to monitor the performance of SIS can prove overwhelming. Not only do you need to be adept in maintaining a database, but you also need to understand how to consolidate various critical information sources in order to make sense of all the data collected.
Fortunately, there are solutions in the market to help end-users overcome these hurdles to effectively monitor SIS performance. This paper looks at some key areas that a complete solution should cover and what some of the features of such a solution are.
Keywords: safety function monitoring, SIS, SIS performance monitoring.
Andy Yam has worked extensively in the process and engineering-related industries, holding a range of positions from project management, to sales and marketing and operations management. Currently, Andy specialises in safety instrumented systems for the process industries, with the ultimate aim of providing protection for people, the environment and plant assets. He is currently the Functional Safety Lead within Yokogawa for Australia and New Zealand. Andy is a certified expert in functional safety, especially in the process industries. He holds several industry-recognised certifications, including Certified Functional Safety Expert (EXIDA CFSE Governance Board) and TUV Rheinland Functional Safety Expert, and is an Accredited Facilitator for the TUV Rheinland FS Engineer Certification Course. Andy is a member of the Standards Australia AS 61511 Work Group. His role as Functional Safety Lead within Yokogawa Australia and New Zealand has seen him involved in a wide range of major oil and gas, chemical and power projects, including major onshore and offshore developments and recent involvement in coal seam gas and liquid natural gas projects. This broad application experience and depth of understanding of functional safety standards (and their implementation) provides a balanced appreciation of the needs of the end-user and how changing legislation affects current and future safety instrumented systems plans. |
References
IEC [International Electrotechnical Commission] (2010) ‘International Standard: Functional Safety of electrical/electronic/programmable electronic safety-related systems – Part 1: General requirements, IEC 61508–1:2010.’IEC [International Electrotechnical Commission] (2016) ‘International Standard: Functional Safety – Safety Instrumented Systems for the Process Industry Sector – Part 1: Framework, Definitions, System, Hardware and Application Programming Requirements, IEC 61511–1:2016.’
Yam, A. (2015) Management of functional safety – gaps in the operation phase. In ‘5th Safety Control Systems Conference’. Available at: http://www.iceweb.com.au/sis/IDCPapers/ManageFunctSafetyGapsOpPhase.pdf [verified 20 March 2018].
