Finch has grown its capabilities and works in Process Safety Management and Machinery Safety Management across consulting, expert and training services.
We are asked to get involved in multi-disciplined, complex and challenging but very interesting projects.
Our expert consultants Howard Wheeler and Steve Bennett find that the two aspects that challenge many clients are dealing with the functional safety of legacy equipment, and how to treat functional safety when process meets machine.
In very basic terms, the risk associated with a machine tends to be stated in “Performance Levels” or “PL” and the risk associated with a process tends to be stated in “Safety Integrity Levels” or “SIL”. Once stated, the PL and SIL ratings are then used to design the safety system, but this is hard with legacy equipment that might not be appropriately rated or might not have an accurate historical record, or one at all! To add a little more complexity, although the standards for PL and SIL are clearly defined, there is often debate and discussion on which approach to use.
These problems often have pragmatic and safe solutions, and rarely do you need to put everything in a skip and scrap it, then start again!
But pragmatism and safety need expertise, knowledge and experience as a basis, so in every project, Finch has the fantastic resource of its great depth and breadth of expertise and industrial experience, as well as being part of many standards committees that are so influential.
But, once the system is up and running, assume that it starts to deteriorate! That’s Tristan Pulford’s area #AssetIntegrityManagement #AssetLifeExtension.
And, don’t forget that people are likely to be involved – what’s their SIL rating on Monday, and then on Friday? More on this later by Richard Brown #TheHumanFactor .
#ProcessSafetyManagement #MachinerySafetyManagement #AssetIntegrityManagement #AssetLifeExtension #The HumanFactor
