“This training program is superb and is a must-do, for every professional who desires to master Functional Safety and work in areas such as Risk Assessment, Safety Integrity Level, Safety Instrumented Systems and such. Dr. Houtermans is not only an expert in the subject but also a very good speaker and trainer and I absolutely enjoyed being in the program when all my doubts were cleared in no time” was a spontaneous reactions from one of the participants. “The TUV test is tough but it is also necessary to pass it and get the title of FSEng, as our clients insist on qualified personnel working on their safety systems” was the reason given by another engineer who participated in the program.

The next batch starts from April 17th and registrations have already started according to an Abhisam spokesman who informed us. So we think it will be a great idea to participate in this, don’t you?

The oil spill apparently occurred due to a rupture in a flexible export pipeline running from an FPSO in the  Bonga field to an oil tanker. (FPSO is an acronym used in the Oil & Gas industry for Floating Production Storage and Offtake vessels).

The source of the leak has been plugged, said Peter Ibador, head of the Nigerian National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency, say news reports.

But the spill has started moving towards to coast and poses a serious threat to the environment, adversely affecting birds, fish and other marine life. Experts from Britain have been called to help, as have been Nigerian naval ships who have been pressed into action to help with the cleanup. Infra red equiopment is being used to find out places where the sheen is thicker and dispersants are being used to clear it up.

Shell now says that about 50% of the oil has already been dissipated or evaporated, though a rainbow like sheen can still be seen on the ocean’s surface.

In celebration of its 40th anniversary, OSHA held the Picture It!: Safe Workplaces for Everyone photo contest. The contest challenged anyone with a passion for photography to capture an image of workplace safety and health and share it with OSHA. At the same time, OSHA held a second contest challenging OSHA staff to submit their images of workplace safety and health.  Some of the photographs are shown below.

This is the first prize winning one. It shows workers on a beach cleaning up after the infamous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. It was submitted by Aaron Sussell, Cincinnati, Ohio.

The one below got the second prize.

This one below got the third prize, it shows a machine shop operator working on a machine using proper personal protective equipment.

The one below shows a gas monitor being used for entering a confined space and it clearly shows the expected reading before one would enter. This one got an honorable mention.

All the six winning photographs, and seven honorable mentions, can be viewed at http://www.osha.gov/osha40/photo-winners.html.
“I am thrilled by the way these photographers have so creatively captured the challenges of workplace safety and health,” said Dr. David Michaels, Assistant Secretary of Labor for Occupational Safety and Health, expressing his enthusiasm for the overwhelming response to the contest and the quality of the submissions. “Each winning photograph tells its own powerful story of the contribution of workers to our great country’s success, and America, and of the vital importance of protecting their health and safety. I am deeply grateful to everyone who contributed their time and talent to this contest.”

Aaron Sussell, of Cincinnati, Ohio, was selected from more than three hundred submissions as the first-place winner of the public contest for his compelling photograph of workers involved in last summer’s cleanup of the Gulf Oil Spill. “This is a great captured moment that tells the story of workplace safety,” said Kathleen Klech, Photography Director, Condé Nast Traveler Magazine and Photo Contest judge.

Second-place winner Roberto Carlos Vergara, of Charlotte, North Carolina, was lauded for the otherworldly display of light and shadow in his photograph; set high above the clouds, the photograph emphasizes the importance of the fall protection equipment that each worker in the frame wears. Roberto Rodriguez of Mesquite, Texas, placed third for his image of a worker safely operating a machine in the midst of a visually active factory floor.

The winner of the OSHA staff contest is Elena Finizio, who works in OSHA’s Braintree, Massachusetts Area Office. Ms. Finizio’s photograph of the eerie glow of molten metal as workers pour a casting was praised for its “visual drama” by photojournalist and contest judge Earl Dotter. Steve Baranowski, also of OSHA’s Braintree, Massachusetts Area Office, was awarded second place in the internal contest for his vivid portrayal of an OSHA compliance officer at work. Frank Wenzel of the Washington State Department of Labor and Industries placed third for his dizzying image of wind turbine construction.

Several honorable mentions were also awarded to photographers whose work will be featured on the contest Web page. They are Koralie Hill of Oakland, California; Roy Berke of Sacramento, California; Paul Navarette of Riverside, California; Wally Reardon of Pulaski, New York; and Jorge Intriago of Columbia, South Carolina from the public contest; and Keith Tsubata of the Hawaii Department of Labor and Industrial Relations and McClelland Davis of the Washington State Department of Labor and Industries from the OSHA staff.

The winners will receive framed certificates from Secretary of Labor Hilda L. Solis (first prize) and Dr. Michaels (second and third prizes). All six winning photographs will be framed and hung in the Department of Labor’s headquarters at the Frances Perkins Building in Washington, D.C., where they will serve as daily reminders of the real-life impacts of OSHA’s mission. Winners were selected by an expert panel of judges that included Mr. Dotter; Carl Fillichio, the Department of Labor’s Senior Advisor for Communications and Public Affairs; Kathleen Klech, photography director for Condé Nast Traveler magazine; and Shawn Moore, the chief photographer for the Department of Labor. OSHA extends its thanks to these judges for their generosity and their critical expertise.

This contest was a great way to improve awareness of industrial safety amongst the public at large.

Till recently, the SIS and the main plant automation systems (also known as BPCS-Basic Process Control Systems, which could be DCS or PLC based systems) used to be completely separate systems. The hardware, software and programming of both systems (BPCS and SIS) used to be totally different, like chalk and cheese. Later on, we began to see the introduction of integrated BPCS-SIS systems, where the BPCS and SIS were not totally different, but shared some of the hardware, user interface, communications network, etc. Though the programming was similar, the SIS programming was kept secure and separate with the aid of special functions in software.

Now we are seeing an even more integrated approach, in Fieldbus systems. For example FOUNDATION Fieldbus (which is one of the many Fieldbus protocols in use today) has introduced special Safety Instrumented Functions, that could be implemented in FOUNDATION Fieldbus based systems. They call this FF-SIF and this concept was presented in the FOUNDATION Fieldbus general assemby held sometime back. It is being done in a pilot project in Saudi Aramco at their Dhahran site. FOUNDATION Fieldbus recently announced that updated device development solutions for its Foundation Fieldbus for Safety Instrumented Functions (FF-SIF) technology are available. The new release includes the FF-SIF Technical Specification, Foundation for SIF Interoperability Test Kit (SIF ITK), and DD Library.

As many of you know, Fieldbus technology is rapidly gaining ground in the process industries and if the FF-SIF concept is accepted by user industries, it will lend a new meaning to the word “integrated” BPCS-SIS. In fact the distinction will get blurred. What FF-SIF proposes is to have Safety Instrumented Function blocks that will be resident in the smart devices in the field (like a humble pressure transmitter for instance) and thus can be used to implement Safety functions.This means that plants who decide to implement Fieldbus even on a smaller scale can have the power of a Safety Instrumented System, without paying a steep price for creating a separate system, programming, wiring, etc,etc. All they have to do is to utilize the SIF blocks that will presumably be available.  Since the user industries main aim is to implement Safety functions in an effective manner, this seems to be a good deal for them.

If all this sounds like being too complicated, you need not worry. Simply download the Fieldbus training course from Abhisam Software that we hear is being released in Q1 of 2012 and you will be fine, fully updated and conversant with all this new technology.

There is a lot of curiosity in India about Safety Integrity Level (SIL), Functional Safety and related topics but very little information is available for say, a design engineer who wishes to understand the concept of SIL or for an Instrument vendor who would like to certify his transmitter as “SIL 3″ compliant. There are also a lot of misconceptions and myths surrounding SIL which is tragic. There is confusion amongst some engineers for example between verification and validation, about what constitutes a Safety Function and whether it is the same thing as an interlock, whether redundancy and voting are the same thing, whether 2003 is better or worse than 1002 and so on….

Local manufacturers are not clear how to get their products certified to SIL and they hence lose out to products of a similar quality, but which have the SIL tag on them.

All these problems and questions will be answered in this information packed one day workshop. Educating participants and fielding various questions will be Dr. Michel Houtermans,  the world’s leading authority on Functional Safety, Safety Instrumented Systems and SIL. Dr. Houtermans will be present in India to carry out a series of workshops and training programs in February and this a good opportunity to meet and understand the following:

• Introduction to Functional Safety and SIL
• History of functional safety
• Industries applying Functional Safety- Case Studies
• How does SIL affect me, my products and my company?
• How to determine the SIL level?
• How to design for SIL?
• What role does certification play?
• What is a “SIL study”?
• Is SIL 3 better than SIL 1? …… and much more.

Interested participants may contact Abhisam Software India office to get the details.