Collection of process safety leading and lagging indicators is an important tool for driving improved safety. Tier 3 leading indicators (challenges to safety systems) indicate failures of process safety management systems and highlight areas that should be improved to prevent a more serious event. Safe Operating Limit (SOL) exceedances are a commonly used Tier 3 leading indicator (per API 754). Despite the broad applicability across industry, the determination and application of SOLs often varies from company to company.
This webinar discusses current industry practices around the determination and application of safe operating limits as established by a recent benchmark survey of over 150 safety practitioners from around the world. Areas explored in the survey of SOLs include; methodology for calculating, how / where information is stored, how / when established values are reviewed and audited, usage as a Process Safety Management Leading indicator, integration with operations (training, documentation), identification and tracking of when exceedances have occurred, and actions taken on exceedance. Key results and conclusions will be presented as well as recommendations on where industry should focus on improvement.
Todd Stauffer, PE, is responsible for exida’s alarm management products and services (training, consulting, SILAlarm™ rationalization software). He has been an editor and voting member of the ISA-18.2 standards committee on alarm management since 2005. He was an active participant in the development / publication of the ISA-18.2 standard itself and as an editor / reviewer for ISA’s series of technical reports on alarm management (including ISA-18.2 TR1 “Alarm Philosophy” and TR3 “Basic Alarm Design” for which he served as co-chair). He is currently the co-chair of the joint working group developing ISA-84.91.03 “Functional Safety of Safety Controls, Alarms, and Interlocks for the Process Sector”. Todd is an instructor for ISA’s official training class on alarm management and is exida’s representative on the EEMUA 191 committee.
He has executed numerous alarm philosophy workshops, gap assessments, and alarm management training classes for different control system platforms. Todd developed exida’s alarm philosophy best practices template. He is also the product manager for the SILAlarm rationalization software tool. Todd is an industry thought leader in alarm management. He has published numerous articles and presented many papers at supplier user group and industry conferences. His presentations have garnered three “Best in Conference” nominations and his article “Don’t be Alarmed: Avoid Unplanned downtime from alarm overload“ was selected as Intech magazine’s best article of the year in 2007.