- by Steve Gandy, CFSP
- Thursday, November 15, 2018
- Functional Safety
Are You Undertaking Periodic Personnel Performance Assessments?
One of the changes that was made in 2016 to the IEC 61511 standard was the inclusion of periodic personnel assessments (clause 5.2.2.3), whereby a procedure is required to manage the competence of all those involved in the SIS lifecycle; “periodic” assessments are to be carried out to document…
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- by Steve Gandy, CFSP
- Thursday, May 31, 2018
- Functional Safety
Do You Measure the Performance of Your SIS?
It always amazes me that when teaching our FSE 100 Functional Safety Engineering course, the number of times I find that end users in the class are not really measuring the performance of their SIS. In most cases, they are doing some measurements, but not thoroughly.
It…
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- by Steve Gandy, CFSP
- Wednesday, July 02, 2014
- Certification
How Good Is Your Functional Safety Management?
Those operating in the process world should be familiar with the concept of Functional Safety Management (FSM) and the need to have well defined processes and procedures in place. Otherwise, how else will they be able to ensure that their Safety Instrumented System (SIS) and plant…
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- by Steve Gandy, CFSP
- Thursday, June 05, 2014
- Industrial Cybersecurity
How Secure Are Your SIS, BPCS, and/or SCADA Systems?
As an end-user, do you know how reliable and safe your Safety Instrumented Systems (SIS) and Basic Process Control Systems (BPCS) are from potential cyber issues? Do you rely on your vendor statements regarding the robustness of their products? If the answer to these questions is “don’t know”…
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- by Steve Gandy, CFSP
- Thursday, September 08, 2016
- Industrial Cybersecurity
How Secure Is Your Safety Instrumented System (SIS)?
As the cybersecurity threats in the industrial world continue to rise, the automation world continues to grapple with how to address these issues. As such, the newly released IEC61511-1: 2016 edition has included a new clause to address this (Clause 8.2.4). In essence, End Users have to carry out…
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- by Steve Gandy, CFSP
- Wednesday, May 31, 2017
- Functional Safety
Making Use of Leading and Lagging Indicators – Are You Using These for Functional Safety?
Some of you reading this may not be aware or familiar with the terms “leading” and “lagging” indicators, when applied to Functional Safety. The concept isn’t new but does provide significant benefit when applying this to Functional Safety because, if used correctly, these indicators can help significantly improve performance. …
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- by Steve Gandy, CFSP
- Thursday, January 21, 2016
- Functional Safety
Safety Requirements Specifications (SRS): The Good and the Bad
The IEC 61511 Standard requires the user to create a Safety Requirements Specification (SRS) for a Safety Instrumented System (SIS) that incorporates all the analysis done during the Risk Assessment, HAZOP/PHA and LOPA reviews. The SRS falls into two types: an initial conceptual SRS, often referred to as the…
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- by Loren Stewart, CFSE
- Tuesday, December 22, 2015
- Functional Safety
SILSafe Data Website
exida has launched the web site www.silsafedata.com. SILSafe Data is a web site listing a number of product categories used in process control and the expected range of failure rates for process industry applications. The use of realistic and application appropriate failure rate data has a significant…
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- by Steve Gandy, CFSP
- Wednesday, February 19, 2014
- Certification
Ten Years Later
It’s hard to believe that the IEC61511 standard has been in existence since 2003, and most companies operating in the process, chemical, and refining industries (or any other hazardous process manufacturer) have adopted its practices. It’s also significant that any plants that were built back then with a…
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- by John Yozallinas, CFSE
- Friday, May 06, 2016
- Functional Safety
What Good is a Safety Manual?
Many products have options and features that are valuable to users. But not all these features should be permitted while the product is performing a safety function. For example, HART communications should not be permitted to write data to a transmitter while it’s performing the safety function. If you…
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- by Steve Gandy, CFSP
- Thursday, February 22, 2018
- Functional Safety
What Managers Need To Know About Functional Safety
If you’re a manager in the process industries then you should be familiar with the concept of Functional Safety and the need to have well defined processes and procedures in place. If not, then how else will you be able to ensure that your Safety Instrumented System and plant…
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- by Steve Gandy, CFSP
- Thursday, June 22, 2017
- Functional Safety
Why Run-to-Fail Is Not A Good Maintenance Strategy For SIS
One of the fundamentals of the Probability of Failure on Demand (PFDavg) calculations in SIL verification analysis, is the concept of a constant failure-rate during useful life of the equipment. Probabilistic calculations assume that the failure rate of the devices used in a Safety Instrumented System (SIS)…
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