INSPECTIONS AND AUDITS OF SAFETY INSTRUMENTED SYSTEMS

Assessing the safety, availability and reliability of Safety Instrumented Systems (SIS)

Safety during operation is one of the key issues for industrial facilities, equipment, products and processes. It needs to be addressed with particular attention during design stage. Any organization using such facilities, equipment, products or processes needs to be able to demonstrate or assess their safety, availability and reliability. This is either because it is required by regulations, for instance for facilities and equipment subject to CE Marking within the European Union; or to comply with a voluntary requirement to reach a certain quality level; or to comply with the requirements of its own clients, down the supply chain.

What are Inspections and Audits of Safety Instrumented Systems?
Based on its technical and methodological expertise, Bureau Veritas first evaluates the need and the relevance of a Safety Instrumented System (SIS) in relation to the client’s facility, equipment, product or the process involved. The Bureau Veritas team then implements a series of inspections and audits to assess SIS reliability, availability and Safety Integrity Level (SIL). This can be done from design stage to operation stage throughout the development, production, installation, start-up and maintenance stages of the SIS.
Bureau Veritas can assist you in many ways. These can include: identifying risks and assessing risk reduction (HAZID, HAZOP, Risk Analysis); performing a diagnosis/audit of your processes to identify and assess required actions; performing RAMS (Reliability, Availability, Maintainability, Safety) studies; independent third party assessment of the Safety Integrity Level (SIL) met by the SIS; and performing training sessions adapted to your situation.

What are the key benefits?
- Allocate risk reduction provided by the SIS, thus giving it a Safety Integrity Level (SIL).
- Demonstrate reliability and availability of the SIS.
- Verify and validate the design and development process of SIS hardware and software components.
- Demonstrate compliance of the SIS with international standards (such as IEC 61508, IEC 61511, ISA84.01-2004, IEC 62061, ISO 13849, CENELEC 50126, 50128 & 50129).