The course will cover everything related to Functional Safety at an introductory level. It will answer key questions that are asked by many engineers and safety professionals, in relation to Safety Integrity Level (SIL) and Functional Safety.

These are:

• What is Hazard and Risk?
• What is Functional Safety?
• What does SIL mean?
• What are the IEC 61508 and IEC 61511 standards?
• What SIL applies to my plant, instrument or location?
• How can I get my products “SIL compliant?
• What are Safety Instrumented Systems?
• What do you mean by a “SIL Study”?
• How do I get a SIL Certificate for my transmitter, valve or other device?

These and many other questions will be answered by Dr. Michel Houtermans, Managing Partner, Risknowlogy , who is considered to be the world’s leading expert on Functional Safety and SIL.

This training program is something that is useful to Instrumentation & Control System manufacturers, system integrators, engineering consultants, electrical and instrument contractors as well as users in the process industries such as Oil & Gas, Petroleum, Chemicals, Fertilizers, Power and similar industries that utilize complex safety and emergency shutdown systems to keep their plants, people and the environment safe. It will also be of interest to regulatory authorities who supervise these industries.

For more details please contact Abhisam Software . Seats are limited and will be allotted on a first come first serve basis.

Mumbai, Sep 01, 2011- Abhisam Software informs us that they have arranged an introductory course in Functional Safety on 26th Sep 2011 in Mumbai at Hotel Kohinoor Continental, Andheri near the airport. The course will cover everything related to Functional Safety at an introductory level. It will answer key questions that are asked by many engineers and safety professionals in relation to Safety Integrity Level (SIL) and Functional Safety.

These are:

• What is Hazard and Risk?
• What is Functional Safety?
• What does SIL mean?
• Is SIL 3 better than SIL 2?
• What are the IEC 61508 and IEC 61511 standards?
• What SIL applies to my plant, instrument or location?
• How can I get my products “SIL compliant?
• What are Safety Instrumented Systems?
• What do you mean by a “SIL Study”?

These and many other questions will be answered by Dr. Michel Houtermans, the world’s leading expert on Functional Safety and SIL.

This training program is something that is useful to Instrumentation & Control System manufacturers, system integrators, engineering consultants, electrical and instrument contractors as well as users in the process industries such as Oil & Gas, Petroleum, Chemicals, Fertilizers, Power and similar industries that utilize complex safety and emergency shutdown systems to keep their plants, people and the environment safe. It will also be of interest to regulatory authorities who supervise these industries.

For more details please contact Abhisam Software .

Mumbai, 22nd Feb 2011- Abhisam Software informs us that they have arranged a three and half day training program on Functional Safety, in association with Risknowlogy. The program will enable successful participants to get a certificate from TUV SUD, that identifies them as Functional Safety professionals. The program known as Functional Safety Certification Course (FSCC for short) will be conducted by the world renowned expert Dr. Michel Houtermans, of Risknowlogy. This program has been conducted by Dr. Houtermans in several countries all over the world like the UK, France, UAE, Finland and so on, which has helped hundreds of engineers and safety professionals to learn about Functional Safety and related areas such as SIL (Safety Integrity Level) Assessments, SIL Verification, Safety Instrumented Systems, standards such as IEC 61511 and IEC 61508. The program will focus on the process industries and will be useful to people working in chemical, pterochemical, oil & gas, refining, specialty chemicals, agrochemicals and any other process industry that uses Safety Instrumented Systems/ Safety Shutdown Systems/ Emergency Shutdown Systems.

The Mumbai program will be conducted from 11th April to 14th April 2011 at Hotel Kohinoor Continental, Andheri, which is a great location close to both the International and Domestic airports. There are several good hotels in the vicinty too, which makes the venue even better. India’s fast growing economy means that lots of demand exists for professionals who have the TUV qualification in Functional Safety. All these years professionals had to go to cities like Abu Dhabi or Singapore to take these kind of courses, but now these people can do it in Mumbai itself, saving a lot of travel costs and inconvenience.

For more details about the program please contact Abhisam Software in India.

For the uninitiated, HIPPS is a special type of Safety Instrumented System that is used to implement pressure protection. Generally mechanical devices like Safety Relief Valves (SRVs) and Rupture Disks are used to relieve overpressure in equipment. However the performance of these devices is not always reliable. Besides venting out the system’s gases may not be desirable due to environmental reasons. So HIPPS are used. In a typical HIPPS there is a dual redundant(1oo2) or Triple Redundant (1oo3) configuration of pressure transmitters in the pipeline that carries the high pressure (say a gas line) to an equipment that is sought to be protected (say a gas storage vessel).

In case of the traditional system, one would have had rupture disks on the pipeline and possibly SRVs on the vessel to protect it in case the gas pressure exceeded the safe operating pressure of the vessel-however in case of a HIPPS, the pressure transmitters will transmit the overpressure signal within fraction of a second to a SIS logic solver that will trigger the shutdown of the line using quick shutoff valves.

This is shown in the picture below.

For a more detailed study about Safety Instrumented Systems , including HIPPS, download the training course here.

High Integrity Pressure Protection System

Simply right click on it and select “Save Target”, it will be downloaded to your computer. It will only work on Windows though, not Mac. And you may need administrative rights to run it if you’re using Vista as it is a program and not just a document file.

The full course consists of seven modules, that are much bigger and more detailed than this one, which is just an introduction to get you started. Since Safety Instrumented Systems are growing in importance every year ( as they help plants comply to more stringent regulations that aim to protect people, the environment and of course assets from damage and destruction) it is a good idea to be updated about how these things work, rather than looking at it as a black box that does “safety”. Learning about SIS in more detail can give you an edge over other professionals who are still ignorant about these newer concepts.

If your plant has hazardous or other processes that require the installation of Safety Instrumented Systems to conform to OSHA and other regulations, or if you wish to comply to other international standards like IEC 61511, etc then this subject is very important to know.

Comments on this post are welcome as always.