Does Your SIS Vendor Provide Tools to Support Safety Lifecycle Management?

Even though mandated by functional and process safety standards such as ISA-84 and ISA/IEC 61511, many automation and safety instrumented systems (SIS) vendors do not provide safety lifecycle management software that extends beyond the initial work performed to commission the SIS logic solver.

While the mandated functional safety requirements specification (SRS) should provide a description of how safety should be maintained within a process or plant area, ARC has observed that most vendors do not sup-port these requirements with an appropriate suite of supervisory software designed to make it easier to maintain, enforce, and prove compliance. This often puts an unnecessary burden on end users.

So what types of things should you, as an end user, be thinking about as necessary parts of your safety lifecycle compliance program? Do you use electronic safety lifecycle management tools to help meet traceability requirements or are you attempting to do this manually? Do you have any tools beyond what you used to perform your initial hazardous operations (HAZOP) and layer of protection analysis (LOPA)? Your SIS logic solver? Can your current software tools "talk" to each other to share data or do you frequently have to reenter the same data into different tools?

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Keywords: Safety Instrumented System (SIS), Safety Lifecycle Management (SLM), Safety Instrumented Function (SIF), Safety Requirements Specification (SRS), ARC Advisory Group.