The purpose of Functional Safety Assessments (FSAs) is twofold: to ensure that all the activities and documentation for the particular Safety Lifecycle (SLC) phase have been completed as per requirements; to help prevent systematic failures from being introduced. The IEC61511 2003 version recommends five (5) FSAs be conducted but specifies that at least one (1) be conducted prior to starting up the process – FSA 3, also known as the pre-startup safety check. Most companies only rely on FSA 3 but this means that they are risking a delayed startup if problems and/or errors are found, which can of course be costly.
However, the new edition of IEC61511, to be issued this year, proposes to mandate that ALL five (5) FSAs be conducted. This will have a significant impact on end user practices, whereby they will need to provide documentary evidence that these have been carried out according to requirements. This is especially relevant for the operation and maintenance side, whereby periodic assessment and management of change will require FSAs. The webinar will outline the requirements for each FSA and why, if implemented properly, these can lead to a much more efficient and effective design for Safety Instrumented Systems (SIS). The benefit of which will be to keep costs down and improve availability.
Dr. Steve Gandy has been with exida for 13 years as VP of Global Business Development. Dr Gandy has 40+ years of experience in industrial automation controls and safety. Dr. Gandy is head of exida Engineering and is a director of several of exida’s subsidiary companies. In addition to his sales and management responsibilities, Dr. Gandy has written the "Functional Safety For Managers: What Managers Need to Know" book, as well as "Managing In An Automation Company", and published and presented numerous papers at conferences. Dr. Gandy is also one of the primary instructors for exida’s highly successful FSE100 Functional Safety course.