C&P Engineering Services’ TUV certified Functional Safety Engineers come with a wealth of experience managing and delivering all aspects of the IEC61508/IEC61511 lifecycle within Top Tier COMAH Facilities.
Functional Safety Assessments should be completed by an independent body and must be in the form or either a person, department or organisation. The level of independence is determined either by the severity of the consequence the safety function is trying to protect against, or the Safety Integrity Level (SIL) of the safety function.
Functional Safety Assessments can provide significant advantages in the early identification of compliance gaps and opportunities for streamlining processes, making it easier to demonstrate compliance with IEC61511
In general there are 3 key stages:
- IEC 61511 Lifecycle Stage 2: Once your Hazard studies and Risk Assessments are complete (e.g. HAZOP LOPA) and the next stage is to complete the design of the Safety Instrumented Functions (SIFs)
- IEC 61511 Lifecycle Stage 3: As per the Safety Requirements Specification (SRS) a FSA will need to be conducted before any introductions to the hazards of the process system.
- IEC 61511 Lifecycle Stage 4: During the life cycle of a plant or process system, sufficient data will be generated and captured in order to assess the original assumptions, their validation, or whether they require updating to reflect operational experience. In order to ensure your safety system operating methodology and philosophy is current and up to date, this should be completed periodically.
What are the requirements of the standards IEC 61508 / IEC 61511 in relation to the SIS life-cycle?
IEC61508/IEC61511 requires that FSAs should be undertaken on a periodic basis as well as key stages in the SIS lifecycle by independent, competent person(s), department(s) or organisations.
A Functional Safety Assessment is an audit to ensure all processes and procedures are in place in order to demonstrate full compliance with the IEC 61511 requirements. This includes verifying each stage of the lifecycle and validation of the full safety conditions and management procedures in place for all stages of the safety life-cycle.
Prior to the start up of operations or the introduction to hazards, it is a compulsory requirement to carry out an FSA under the standard IEC 61511. The duty holder must be able to demonstrate and confirm the Functional Safety has been achieved for the necessary risk reduction in relation to the process system under assessment.
Functional Safety Assessments (FSA) are the key to ensuring the continued safe and reliable operation of your processes. It is an investigation to determine whether the process safety function being assessed achieves the required level of functional safety or if there is a requirement to progress to the next phase of the lifecycle, or continue within the current lifecycle phase until all essential methods are in place.