News & Events.
exida Presenting and Exhibiting at AIChE’s 2017 Spring Meeting & 13th GCPS
March 20, 2017
exida will be presenting and exhibiting at the AIChE’s 2017 Spring Meeting & 13th GCPS to be held March 26-30, 2017 in San Antonio, TX. Stop by Booth #530 during exhibit hours.
This year we will be showcasing some of our newest products and services that reduce engineering time and minimize risk.
Move data from PHA high risk hazard scenarios into LOPA with the push of a button:
Inputs that are defined in the Process Hazard Analysis tool (e.g., causes, safeguards) are instantly populated for Layer of Protection Analysis (e.g., initiating events and independent protection layers).
Automatic Configuration of DeltaV SIS Logic
See the plug-in to our industry-leading exSILentia tool that allows DeltaV SIS configuration logic and design documentation (C&E Matrix) to be createdautomatically from your SIL Verification calculations and requirements specification.
Seamlessly create database for tracking of SIS demands, proof test results, failures, and maintenance activities from SIL Verification
SIF component information automatically configured into your plant hierarchy within exSILentia’s SILStat module.
Configure Alarm Flood Suppression Logic during Alarm Rationalization
Use SILAlarm to effortlessly configure Alarm Flood Suppression modules (triggering conditions, suppression behavior, dynamic prioritization, alarms to suppress) and faceplates.
Schedule your Cyber Risk Assessment with exida
Learn more about exida’s Cyber Security services for process industry users.
Presentations
Also, Denise Chastain-Knight, exida Senior Safety Engineer, Todd Stauffer, exida Director of Alarm Management, and Steve Gandy, Head of exida Business Development, are among the presenters at this year’s event.
SPRING MEETING POSTER SESSION & NETWORKING RECEPTION
478168 - Three Reasons Major Event Risk Management Fails on Capital Project
The goal of process safety is to prevent fires, explosions and major chemical release from industrial processes through the application of sound risk management principals. Most organizations have extensive experience managing risk in an operating environment, but little practice managing risk in a capital project. Engineering design and technology providers are experienced at project design and execution; however, process safety is rarely a core focus of the project. Collectively the representatives in a project team may have knowledge and desire to effect risk management, but too often they experience “If only” moments before start-up and hand-over. Capital projects offer a huge opportunity to make step changes in process safety; however, traditional project execution models must evolve if the opportunity is to be realized. This paper will discuss three reasons effective major event risk management is compromised in projects, provide examples of cause and effect relationships leading to the failures, and offer suggestions for improvement.
exida Presenter: Denise Chastain-Knight, exida Senior Safety Enginee
Date: Monday, March 27, 2017
Time: 5-7 PM
Location: Exhibit Hall 3 (Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center)
479547 - How Important Is Realistic Failure Rates for Safety Instrumented Functions?
A given Safety Instrumented Function design must be verified to meet the required SIL level by calculating probability of failure on demand. However, this does require realistic failure rate data for each device. Fortunately, many device manufacturers are getting their products certified per IEC 61508 and many of the certificates now have failure rate data. Other manufacturers supply analysis reports with failure rate data. But how good is this data supplied by the manufacturers? All such data must be checked to make certain it is applicable for the process industries as some data may have been derived based on machine safety or automotive applications.
This paper will show some examples of manufacturer provided failure rate data and a methodology created to validate device type failure rate data for the process industries.
exida Presenter: Loren Stewart, exida Senior Safety Engineer
Date: Monday, March 27, 2017
Time: 5-7 PM
Location: Exhibit Hall 3 (Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center)
147 - Ensuring the Correct Response from the First Line of Defense – Operators
“Closing the Holes in the Swiss Cheese Model” – Maximizing the Reliability of Operator Response to Alarms.
Layers of protection for abnormal event management can be modeled as barriers of swiss cheese according to James Reason. An operator’s response to an alarm is one of the first layers of protection to prevent a hazard from escalating to an incident.
This paper will present best practices for maximizing the operator’s reliability for understanding and responding to abnormal situations as adapted from the alarm management standards ISA-18.2-2016 and IEC 62682. Examples include alarm rationalization to ensure all alarms are meaningful and to capture “tribal knowledge”, prioritization to help operators determine which alarms are most critical, and creation of alarm response procedures. The treatment of safety alarms, which are those that are deemed critical to process safety or to the protection of human life or the environment, will be specifically highlighted.
The paper will also discuss key human factors considerations for maximizing operator situation awareness (SA) by preventing SA “demons”; such as developing an errant mental model of the process, attention tunneling, data overload, and misplaced salience. As such the resolution of issues which inhibit operator performance, such as nuisance alarms and alarm floods, will also be discussed.
exida Presenter: Todd Stauffer, Director of Alarm Management Services
Date: Wednesday, March 29, 2017
Time: 8 - 10 AM;
Location: 214BC (Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center)
2017 Ethylene Producers' Committee Conference
479544 - Safety Instrumented Systems Design & Lifecycle Fundamentals
It has been identified that 44% of recorded accidents involving control systems were due to specification issues.
This review will emphasize the importance of correct Process Hazard and Layer of Protection Analyses to determining the appropriate specification of Safety Integrity Levels for the Safety Instrumented Functions in a plant. If the SIF’s are not properly identified and designed then the necessary amount of risk reduction may not be achieved.
The importance of a complete Safety Requirements Specification that identifies all of the requirements of Safety Instrumented Systems and their SIF’s will be discussed. This will include both functional and integrity issues such as target SIL with Risk Reduction Factor (RRF), proof-test intervals, safe state requirements, de-energize or energize to trip requirements etc.
Long term operation and maintenance issues will be described in terms of the difference between useful life and mission time and why run until failure is not a good strategy for SIF’s. The degradation of system integrity beyond the useful life will be explained.
The need for SIL verification to meet the design barriers of probability of failure on demand or probability of failure per hour, hardware fault tolerance and systematic capability will be reviewed along with a description of why it is important to use SIL-rated devices in Safety Instrumented Function designs.
exida Presenters: Steve Gandy & Denise Chastain-Knight
Date: Wednesday, March 29, 2017
Time: 2:05 PM
Location: Hemisfair Ballroom C3 (Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center)