(130b) Functional Safety Key Performance Indicators: Can You Really Manage Them?

With the amount of information generated after a safety instrumented system project, it is time to put the SIS to work. But is this enough? As surprising as it may sound, many end users still miss the primary purpose of IEC 61511, concentrating their efforts in SIL calculations and the over a thousand pages safety requirement specification document. Many fail to see that this is only the tip of the iceberg.

Risk analysis, risk reduction gap, target SIL determination, SIF design, SIL verification, SIS validation, commissioning, assessments – among others – are all activities in the safety lifecycle that somehow need to be integrated and maintained overtime to keep the plant safe.

If a process or functional safety professional or operator needs to determine what risks are associated with a requested design change, if a safety device fails or if a safety function bypass is requested, that professional must dig through hundreds of pages of disconnected documents in order to connect the item of interest to relevant risks and make accurate assessments. That means that too much time is manually spent trying to find and correlate information and not enough time is spent to add value and improve safety.

Using the advantages of digital transformation to establish and monitor functional safety key performance indicators could take process and functional safety management to the next level, linking information from all safety lifecycle phases in one place – from evaluating hazards to O&M – to cost effectively reduce risk.

This presentation will discuss the digital transformation of process and functional safety, the state of current technology, benefits, concerns and what to avoid.