How do You Compare?

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Industry Benchmark Survey on Alarms as Safeguards and Independent Protection Layers (IPLs)

exida recently conducted an industry benchmark survey on the practices for the use of alarms as safeguards and IPLs. With over 200 safety practitioners from around the world providing responses, you can use the survey findings to compare your practices and experiences to your peers and those defined as industry’s best. The full report is now available as a published work that exida presented at the 9th Global Congress on Process Safety.

One of the many areas of focus that was presented in the survey was risk reduction. Have you ever wondered whether you take too much or too little risk reduction for an operator…

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New Working Group (WG7) Formed for Alarm Management

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The ISA-18.2 committee on alarm management has launched a new working group (WG7) that is focused on developing a standard, recommended practice, or technical report on the application of alarm management to process plants utilizing multiple packaged equipment systems. The work will be based on and complement the existing ANSI/ISA-18.2 standard “Management of Alarm Systems for the Process Industries.” (2009)

The objective of this group is to define alarm management practices for plants that utilize packaged process equipment systems. In such a plant it is often very challenging to achieve consistency in alarm system design and operation. (Think of how difficult it is to bring alarm data from disparate systems into a common operator HMI in a way…

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Alarm Rationalization is “Going Green (field)”

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With the growing adoption of the ISA-18.2 standard on alarm management, industry leaders are increasingly implementing alarm management best practices (such as alarm rationalization) during the upfront design, before they start up control systems for new, “Greenfield” installation. There are numerous benefits. You think alarm overload and nuisance alarms are problem in a running (optimized) plant…Imagine what it is like in a plant that doesn’t yet have significant operational experience!

While the benefits are numerous, so are the challenges, especially compared to alarm rationalization on an existing (brownfield) system, where the hardest part is determining whether you are going to start “from where you are” (bottoms up) or start from scratch (tops down). Alarm rationalization is done before the configuration…

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To Be an Alarm…Or Not to Be?

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That is the question.

When your alarm does not meet the definition as defined in the ISA-18.2 standard and/or the criteria established in your alarm philosophy document, it is not an alarm.

By ISA-18.2 definition “an alarm is an audible and /or visible means of indicating to the operator an equipment malfunction process deviation, or abnormal condition requiring a response.” This means that alarms should only be used to indicate when something is wrong (not an expected event) and that if a (timely) operator response is not required (other than acknowledging it), then the point should not be an alarm.

How about “alarms” that don’t meet the definition for being an alarm? These are called “non-alarms.” The…

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Do you have class?

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Are alarm classes defined in your alarm philosophy document (APD) as required by the ISA-18.2 standard? The use of classes (classification) is a new alarm management concept for many. If your APD was created before June 2009, chances are alarm classes are not defined.

Alarm classification is a method for organizing alarms based on common characteristics and requirements (e.g., testing, training, management of change, reporting).  Certainly an alarm that is identified as safeguard in a hazard and operability study (HAZOP), or as an independent protection layer (IPL)  in a LOPA will have more stringent requirements for testing and operator training than the “average” process alarm.  Classification helps to manage groups of alarms and ensure that their unique requirements are being…

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Claiming alarms as an independent protection layer (IPL)

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An interesting question arose recently when creating an FSM plan:

Does the ISA-18.2 standard on alarm management address the claiming of the operator’s response to alarms as a layer of protection?

Not specifically, however the ISA-18.2 standard does require that alarms are rationalized, and that alarm system performance is measured and judged against recommended metrics. Both activities in the alarm management lifecycle directly impact the dependability of the operator’s response to alarm as an IPL. Remember, an IPL must be:

• Specific
• Auditable
• Independent
• Dependable

An unrationalized system is likely to have too many alarms, incorrect priorities, and alarms without an operator response. A system without a monitoring and assessment program is…

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A look into the control room of the Fukushima Dai-Ichi Unit 2 reactor!

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I came across an interesting blog post the other day…

Talk about operating blind.  A great picture shows the status of the control room in the Fukushima Dai-Ichi Unit 2 reactor…Nothing is working (besides the lights)!

All of the computer monitors are blank. The clock is dead. None of the equipment status lights and gauges appears to be functional. None of the annunciator windows are lit—and the plant is far from a condition where no parameters are in alarm status.

Compare this to the picture of the NRC’s Boiling Water Reactor (BWR) Control Room simulator (taken in 2009).

It seems as though control rooms in the US Nuclear industry…

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Rationalize Your Alarm Management Problems Away

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Alarm Overload…Nuisance Alarms…Alarm Floods…Incorrectly Prioritized Alarms…. These alarm management problems are all too common in the modern Distributed Control System (DCS).

Why is this?  In the “olden” days (read panel boards and alarm lightboxes), there was considerable thought put into what alarms were necessary because there was limited real estate available and an actual cost to implementing them (approx. $1000 per alarm). Fast forward to today when alarms are “free.” The modern DCS provides alarms galore. A typical analog indication block provides:
• High
• High-high
• Low
• Low-low
• Rate-of-change
• PVBad
• More alarms out-of-the box

It’s simple to enable all alarms available without considering which are really required.…

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