(55ch) Alarm Floods and Their Connection to Plant Incidents and Near Misses

Investigations of many catastrophic plant events have shown alarm flooding to have been significant distractions for the operators just prior to the incident. Alarm floods have also been determined as a cause or contributing factor to smaller incidents and near misses.

In fact, many of the more recent findings by U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigative Board (CSB) include alarm management as one of the key issues in the investigative reports.

Even after several years of trying, many plants still struggle with controlling alarm floods. Many also have problems generating consistent and accurate alarm metric reports for the entire plant. Now that the ISA 18.2 Alarm Performance Metrics are considered “generally accepted good engineering practices,” we should make haste to demonstrate where each of our plants fall (particularly the PSM plants) versus these metrics before the regulating authority moves in this area. If we are not able to prove we meet the metrics (particularly for alarm flooding) under all operating conditions, we should remediate.

Static rationalization can reduce your average number of alarms, but without controlling the alarm floods, there is no help for the operator when he needs it the most. For most, we must begin the process by recognizing that alarm floods occur most of all during a change of process state.

The means of controlling alarm floods has been available to us for many years. Unfortunately, only a select few have implemented the solution and are achieving the desired results today. These plants have achieved equal to or better than ISA 18.2 since before it was published.

This session will cover the justification for true alarm management from the safety and economic perspective with several practical steps that everyone should take if they are not currently meeting the ISA 18.2 specifications during all operating conditions.