Digitalization of Safety Lifecycle Compliance for Operational Excellence.

Abstract

Plant safety remains a number 1 Priority for all operating companies especially in the Oil & Gas segments, with many companies publishing goals of zero incidents or accidents. In very simple terms, it’s all about managing risk. If you do it well, it leads to profit. If you don’t, then it can lead to losses. Defining & Implementing performance monitoring & management systems to achieve the above-mentioned goals has been the primary focus of our industry and our efforts can broadly be divided in two distinct buckets. Occupational safety: Primarily can be summarised to include Protection of the Personal present near the hazard and therefore includes procedures for protecting personnel from trips, falls or handling hazardous materials, and working at heights.Functional safety: This arena arose from the need to avoid large-scale industrial disasters and involves the safeguards required to manage and mitigate hazards, assess possible consequences and risks, and determine a required level of protection. Today international standards such as IEC 61511, IEC 61508, ISA S84, and others are widely adopted and considered best practice in the industry. They provide a performance-based framework for the design, implementation, and operation/maintenance of automated safeguards, including safety instrumented systems (SIS) such as emergency shutdown systems (ESD), alarm functionality of the distributed control system (DCS), burner management systems, and other automation and control technology geared toward safe operations. But regardless of how well-designed these safeguarding systems are, they can only ever be fully effective if operated and maintained according to their design criteria over the entire operational life of the plant. Growing awareness of this fact has given rise to a newer discipline of process safety management (PSM). Why pursue improvements in safety in addition to the fact that human life and health should be safeguarded at all times? Evidence is beginning to emerge that companies with good process safety realize significant direct cost benefits.