Contrary to what you might have guessed, the “Defeat of the Situation Awareness Demons” is not a new video game on XBOX or Playstation. It is a set of eight (8) factors which undermine effective Situation Awareness. It can be applied to operators in process plants to characterize human…
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Entries tagged with: Todd Stauffer
- by Todd Stauffer
- Tuesday, February 17, 2015
- Alarm Management
Help Your Operators Defeat the Situation Awareness Demons!
- by Todd Stauffer
- Wednesday, May 22, 2013
- Alarm Management
How do You Compare?
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…
- by Todd Stauffer
- Thursday, December 01, 2016
- Alarm Management
How to become a world-class expert (the 10,000 hour rule)
In the book “Outliers”, Malcolm Gladwell popularized the notion that to become an expert in a field requires putting in 10,000 hours of practice.
The emerging picture from studies of expertise is that ten thousand hours of practice is required to reach the level of mastery associated with being…
- by Todd Stauffer
- Thursday, November 02, 2017
- Alarm Management
Human Factors in Alarm Management
Question:
Which one of these layers of protection (operator response to alarm, relief valves, dikes, and safety instrumented systems) is not like the other?
Answer:
Operator response to alarm (Operator Intervention), because of the “Human” factor.
It is very difficult to calculate the probability…
- by Todd Stauffer
- Thursday, November 11, 2021
- Alarm Management
If an Alarm Occurs and the Operator doesn’t Ack it, was it really an Alarm?
Similar to the thought experiment “If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?”, we ask - If an alarm is generated, and the operator fails to acknowledge it, was it really an alarm? A prevalence of unacknowledged…
- by Todd Stauffer
- Thursday, June 11, 2020
- Functional Safety
Know Your Human Error (Part I)
Increases in levels of automation and system complexity impact human error. Medical errors in hospitals and clinics result in approximately 100,000 people dying each year and cost the healthcare industry between $4B – $20B each year. In the petrochemical industries, operational error can cost upwards of $80M per incident. “Operator error”…
- by Todd Stauffer
- Wednesday, July 22, 2020
- Functional Safety
Know Your Human Error (Part II)
“…there is a belief amongst many engineers and managers that human error is both inevitable and unpredictable.
However, human error is inevitable only if people are placed in situations that emphasize human weaknesses and that do not support human strengths”
Martin Anderson, IChemE Safety and Loss Prevention…
- by Todd Stauffer
- Tuesday, January 07, 2014
- Certification
Know Your Value
Typically a person’s salary reflects the value of their skillset and the importance of their role to their company. If that’s TRUE, then there is some good news for safety practitioners. A recent salary survey conducted by ISA and published in InTech magazine benchmarked the average salary…
- by Todd Stauffer
- Tuesday, April 13, 2021
- Functional Safety
Learning From History So We Don’t Repeat It – New Tools
According to numerous industry studies, significant improvement has been made over the last 20 -30 years in occupational safety, but not so much in operational safety (process safety). New process safety incidents continue to occur that bear a striking resemblance to previous incidents. This means we are not effectively learning…
- by Todd Stauffer
- Tuesday, April 19, 2016
- Alarm Management
New Version of ISA-18.2 Alarm Management Standard Is Released (2016)
The new and updated version of the ISA-18.2 standard (ANSI/ISA-18.2-2016, Management of Alarm Systems for the Process Industries) has now been officially released. This supersedes the original edition (2009). The new version incorporates feedback from 6+ years in the "field" and includes some updates based on the IEC 62682…
- by Todd Stauffer
- Friday, February 03, 2017
- Alarm Management
Nuisance Alarms and “The Boy Who Cried Wolf”
The purpose of an alarm is pretty straightforward - to draw the operator’s attention to an abnormal situation that requires action in order to prevent an undesired consequence. Alarms that don’t meet this principle often become nuisance alarms. A nuisance alarm is defined as:
“an alarm that annunciates excessively,…
- by Todd Stauffer
- Wednesday, June 09, 2021
- Alarm Management
Operator Response - the SRK Model
Understanding operator decision-making is a good first step in improving operator effectiveness. Operator decision-making depends on the person (their level of expertise) and the situation (how familiar). A popular behavioral model from Rasmussen proposes that operator response can be broken into three levels; skill-based behavior, rule-based behavior, and knowledge-based behavior as shown in…
- by Todd Stauffer
- Tuesday, March 15, 2016
- Software
PRODUCT SPOTLIGHT: SILAlarm V2.10 - Alarm Flood Suppression
The ISA-18.2 and IEC 62682 alarm management standards provide recommended targets for average alarm rate and for alarm floods - a condition during which the alarm rate is greater than the operator can effectively manage (e.g., more than 10 alarm per 10 mins)…
- by Todd Stauffer
- Thursday, January 14, 2021
- Alarm Management
Rationalize Your Alarm Management Problems Away
The increasing global adoption of alarm management standards (ISA-18.2 and IEC 62682) is bringing the importance of alarm rationalization to the forefront. Rationalization is defined as the “process to review potential alarms using the principles of the alarm philosophy, to select alarms for design, and to document the rationale…
- by Todd Stauffer
- Thursday, September 03, 2020
- Alarm Management
Safety Alarms and Why ISA-84.91.03 is Needed
On July 27, the US Chemical Safety Board (CSB) issued a Factual Update on their investigation into a release of water containing a toxic gas (hydrogen sulfide) and subsequent fatal injuries sustained at the Aghorn Operating Waterflood Station. While it is typically not a good idea to comment on investigations…
- by Todd Stauffer
- Thursday, December 15, 2016
- Functional Safety
The Importance of Process Safety to the next Generation of Chemical Engineers
Significant progress in process safety has been made by many companies and engineers around the globe. This progress is often overshadowed when a process safety accident hits the news. In December of 2007, a runaway reaction led to an explosion at the T2 Laboratories in Jacksonville, FL.…
- by Todd Stauffer
- Monday, March 20, 2017
- Alarm Management
What do Nuisance Alarms, the 80-20 Rule, Mental Models, and More Have in Common?
Most everyone has heard of the “80-20 rule”. It asserts that for many situations, roughly 80% of the effects (outcomes) come from 20% of the causes (inputs). This rule was first proposed in the early 1900s by Vilfredo Pareto, who was an Italian engineer, sociologist, economist, political scientist, philosopher,…
- by Todd Stauffer
- Thursday, July 18, 2019
- Alarm Management
When is an Alarm not an Alarm?
The ISA-18.2 and IEC 62682 standards define an alarm as an “audible and/or visible means of indicating to the operator an equipment malfunction, process deviation, or abnormal condition requiring a timely response”. One of the reasons why alarm systems are out of control (alarm overload, nuisance alarms)…
- by Todd Stauffer
- Tuesday, May 28, 2013
- Alarm Management
When is an Independent Protection Layer (IPL) Not a Safeguard?
We are going to continue discussing the results from exida’s recently published industry benchmark survey on the practices for the use of alarms as safeguards and IPLs. Over 200 safety practitioners from around the world provided responses. This entry will discuss the relationship between alarms identified as safeguards and…
- by Todd Stauffer
- Tuesday, April 14, 2020
- Alarm Management
Which Measure (Rationalized or Annunciated) is More Important?
Get your priorities (distribution) straight
A very common question is posed during alarm management training. Does the recommended alarm priority distribution of ~5% / ~15% / ~80% for high / medium / low priority alarms apply to the rationalized alarm priority distribution (as configured in the control system) or to the annunciatedalarm priority distribution…
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