Services

Process Safety Management

Functional safety management  based on IEC 61508 and IEC 61511 as a method to freedom from unacceptable risk of physical injury or of damage to the health of people either directly or indirectly (through damage to property or to the environment) by the proper implementation of one or more automatic protection functions (often called safety functions) as follows:

    • Functional Safety Management Plan: to specify the competency and methods required for verifying and validating the activities in the design, installation, operation, and decommissioning
    • Hazard and Risk Assessment: to identify the hazards and evaluate any associated risks. A process of function reviews, formal HAZIDs, HAZOPs and accident reviews are applied to identify hazards and risks
    • SIL Determination and Assignment: to classify the risk reduction required by the safety function. This will involve a safety integrity level (SIL) or other quantification assessment based on different methods including Risk graph or layer of Protection Analysis (LOPA).
    • SIL Verification: to determine the Safety Instrumented Function (SIF) total probability of failure on demand (PFD) and architecture constraint of the SIF, based on the SIF architecture, common cause failure, components failure rates, proof test interval/coverage.
    • Safety Requirement Specification (SRS): preparation of functional and integrity requirements for each SIF. The SRS is the main reference document in which the design, installation, validation, and operation of the system must follow. To be fully effective the SRS must be clear, concise, complete and consistent.
    • Proof Test Procedures: development as required by IEC 61508 and IEC 61511, or the review and enhancement of existing performance test procedures within companies. The Proof Test Procedure will allow for the proof test to be carried out at specified intervals by competent personnel while maintaining a consistent and accurate approach 

Machinery Safety

Risk assessment is a method to ensure the safety of workers and other individuals and to reduce the risk to the absolute minimum possible of harm. Even if harm does not occur, there may exist potential risks.

specify basic terminology, principles, and a methodology for achieving safety in the design of machinery. It specifies principles of risk assessment and risk reduction to help designers achieve this objective.

    • Determination of the limits of the machinery like space limit, time limit, etc.
    • Hazard identification of all the various hazards (permanent hazards and hazards that may occur unexpectedly) that may occur due to the machine.
    • Estimate the degree of risk based on the consequences severity, frequency, probability and avoidance to determine the machine Protection Layer (PL)
    • Inherent safe design to minimize the risk of machinery
    • Protective functional safety measures shall be designed if the risk is not adequate
    • Risk evaluation is used to determine whether the risk reduction is necessary by applying protection measures
    • Reliability calculation of machine to predict the probability of machine failure under operation and what safety integrity level is required.

Alarm Management

IEC 62682 specifies principles and processes for the management of alarm systems.  Alarm systems form an essential part of the operator interfaces to large modern industrial facilities. They provide vital support to the operators by warning them of situations that need their attention and have an important role in preventing, controlling, and mitigating the effects of abnormal situations. The alarm management lifecycle including alarm philosophy, identification, rationalization, implementation, operation, maintenance, and management of change.

    • Alarm identifying on P&ID or other documents like HAZOP report can be used to determine the possible need for an alarm or a change to an alarm. The identification stage is the input point of the alarm lifecycle for recommended alarms or alarm changes. Identified alarms are an input to rationalization.
    • Alarm rationalization based on the severity of the consequences. Unnecessary alarms greatly reduce the effectiveness of operators and compromise their ability to address critical alarms, which can be extremely costly and potentially lead to regulatory compliance gap.
    • Alarm response set points and management documents which specify required actions by operation when the alarm is popped up due to the severity and consequences. As well how to maintain management of change and audit the generated alarm for process optimization

Operational Cyber Security

Control and safeguarding system networks could be subject to a cyber-attack. IEC62443 introduces a range of security level (SL) which correspond with different strength of cyber attack. A proper Security Level (SL) should be defined based on SIL requirement for the safety function implemented in SIS.

Due to the connectivity of the automation system (PLC/DCS) to the upper layers, network security is important to protect the process data as well as prevent the controllers against the cyber-attack. We design a secure network against the unwanted data to the automation systems by using the following: 

    • Access control
    • Application security
    • Data loss prevention
    • Firewalls
    • Network segmentation

Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA)

Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA) is methodology for analyzing potential reliability problems early in the development cycle where it is easier to take actions to overcome these issues, thereby enhancing reliability through design. FMEA is used to identify potential failure modes, determine their effect on the operation of the product, and identify actions to mitigate the failures. A crucial step is anticipating what might go wrong with a product. While anticipating every failure mode is not possible, a list of potential failure modes should be formulated extensive as possible.

Functional Safety Assessment (FSA)

IEC 61511 identifies that the Asset Owners or End Users have the responsibility of ensuring that FSAs are undertaken at the specific lifecycle stages of the Safety Instrumented System (SIS). The objective of FSA is to make a judgement as to the functional safety and safety integrity achieved by the safety system, or in other words, whether the system will reliably deliver the risk reduction required

Based on the IEC61511 the functional safety shall be assessed in five stages as:

    • Stage 1 – After the H&RA has been carried out, the required protection layers have been identified and the SRS has been developed.
    • Stage 2 – After the SIS has been designed.
    • Stage 3 – After the installation, pre-commissioning and final validation of the SIS has been completed and operation and maintenance procedures have been developed.
    • Stage 4 – After gaining experience in operating and maintenance.
    • Stage 5 – After modification and prior to decommissioning of a SIS

 

Process Control Systems

In general, process industries utilize a distributed control system (DCS) in the plant which are connected to one or several central control rooms via network. Information gathered of the units, are displayed, and supervised in the central control rooms by operators. DCS suppliers need engineering documents to design, build and program the controllers as follows:

    • The system architecture which demonstrates the 3rd party interfaces, network hierarchy, controller locations, communication protocols, field connections and the whole system structure.
    • Process control philosophy, description, and narratives to define the software requirement for the plant control and safety system
    • Instrumented safety narrative, cause and effect (C&E) diagrams, diagrams range alarm and trip setpoints (RATS), shutdown hierarchy, override philosophy and operation/maintenance actions.
    • Human Machine Interface (HMI) graphics, hierarchy, navigation, and operation philosophy.
    • Detail design documents i.e. I/O list, cable block diagram, loop drawings, connection diagrams, and etc.

 

Industrial and Factory Automation

Factory automation, or industrial automation, is the connecting of factory equipment to improve the efficiency and reliability of process control systems. This in turn leads to lower costs, improved quality, increased flexibility, and less environmental impact. We provide engineering services for the factory automations as follows:

    • Selection the control system components like CPU, I/O cards, communication, power supply, memory, drivers. Design and prepare the control panel location layout arrangement.
    • PLC and SCADA programming with ladder diagram (LD), function block diagram (FBD), instruction list (IL) and sequential flow chart (SFC) methods.
    • Consulting what application to be used for manufacturing execution system (MES), robotic process automation (RPA) and equipment automation program (EAP), etc.
    • Sensors and actuator selection

Mechanical Package E&I

Process industries uses mechanical package which own their instrumentation, HMI control and electrical panels with a proper interface with the plant distributed control system via hardware or serial. We with multi-disciplinary knowledge and experience offers the instrument, control system and functional safety engineering support in small to large size mechanical packages like burner systems, compressor packages, pump skids, etc.  as follows:

    • Specification and material requisition for the skid mounted instruments, actuated valves, electric motors based on the package requirements illustrated on piping and instrumentation drawings
    • Define control system philosophy and specification for mechanical package.
    • Select proper package controller (PLC) and define how to interface with the whole plant process control.
    • Design power distribution design and package single line diagrams
    • Preparing detail design documents including wiring diagrams, cable layout, cable routing, location layout, I/O list for the mechanical skid.