Safety integrity levels… challenges and solutions

Registration and refreshments

Workshop 1: Safety practitioners – getting your message across

• 09.00 - Registration and coffee
• 09.30 - Workshop commences

The aim is to identify and discuss the issues faced by safety practitioners in their day jobs. If all projects followed predictable planned paths then the opportunity for being mis-understood would be limited. Safety practitioners have to be part of the solution, not the problem.

The workshop will look at the challenges faced in different phases of the safety lifecycle and discuss potential resolutions.

For example:

• Plans may be unrealistic, activities slip, but end dates cannot; thus compromising the work of safety engineers
• Suppliers may not provide adequate information
• Skill / competence gaps can lead to incorrect assurance
• Communicating ‘bad news’ too late in the day is not appreciated by senior management or safety approvers
• What to communicate to non-engineers
• Poor understanding of the legal implications of the work

The session will be interactive, and conducted under Chatham House Rule, and all participants must agree to abide by the Rule.

When a meeting, or part thereof, is held under the Chatham House Rule, participants are free to use the information received, but neither the identity nor the affiliation of the speaker(s), nor that of any other participant, may be revealed.

The workshop is aimed at safety practitioners, who are expected to gain an opportunity to identify and discuss real project issues, as well as explore potential resolutions based on the experience of those present.  

John Canning, Virkonen

Workshop 2: Safety assurance – how far do you have to go?

This  workshop will set out the key elements that form the foundation for determining what is deemed ‘safe’  in the context of safety-related/safety critical systems

Overview:

• Holistic approach to achievement of safety assurance
• Legal requirements including the concept of ‘so far as is reasonably practicable (SFAIRP)’ and ‘as low as is reasonably practicable’ (ALARP)
• Risk criteria and the importance of corporate risk tolerability criteria
• ALARP demonstration and the role of cost benefit analysis
• Applications of international standards (e.g. IEC 61508) and their relevance in safety issuance and ‘relevant good practice’

Ron Bell OBE, Director, ESC Ltd

Registration and refreshments

Seminar Chair’s welcome and introduction

Ron Bell, member of one of the two teams responsible for the development & revision of IEC 61508 and Director, ESC Ltd

The importance of SILs in meeting risk targets

• The concept of a Safety Integrity Level (SIL) of a specified safety function
• The importance of a SIL in achieving a specified risk target
• Low demand mode and high demand mode / continuous mode of a safety function
• The need to establish corporate risk criteria as a prerequisite to SIL determination
• The role of the SIL in the design process

Ron Bell, Director, ESC Ltd

A review of different methods of SIL determination

• Using risk graphs to conduct your SIL assessment - practical tools for determining SILs
• Comparing SIL determination tools and techniques
• Calibrating Risk Graphs to ensure HSE minimum risk targets are adhered to
• Applying LOPA (Layer Of Protection Analysis) to determine more realistic and manageable SIL targets

Simon Burwood, Principal Consultant, ESC Ltd

Refreshments and networking opportunity

Functional safety and professional responsibilities

• Professional responsibilities

Felix Redmill, Redmill Consultancy

• Legal responsibilities

Dai Davis, Technology Lawyer, Percy Crow & Davis

What is ‘normally controllable’: investigating controllability targets for in-wheel motors

• Looking at risk in relation to ISO 26262
• Exploring hazards associated with in-wheel motors, in particular the hazard unintended yaw
• Looking at how to rate controllability. ISO 26262 categories controllability as ‘controllable in general’, ‘easy to control’, ‘normally controllable’, and ‘difficult to control’, but what does that mean in context?
• Turning to human factors to understand how people react to induced yaw and what level of yaw they can be expected to control, thus quantifying ‘normally controllable’
• Investigating human factors work and vehicle simulation for the exploration of induced yaw and to quantify safety goals

Helen Monkhouse, Functional Safety Manager, Protean Electric Ltd

Lunch and exhibition

SILs – Smoke and mirrors or a useful tool?

• Debating ‘When is a function not a function?’ looking into and dispelling the confusion people experience when defining system function SILs and system SILs

Peter Sheppard, Senior Safety Engineer and Validator, Bombardier Transportation

Addressing the challenges of safety requirement specifications in the nuclear industry

• Exploring the relationship with safety cases
• Specifying safety functions and performance requirements
• Determining the required SIL
• Sharing experience of safety requirements specification in the nuclear industry

Alec Bounds,  Principal Consultant, ARCADIS UK

Refreshments, networking opportunity and exhibition

Independence and SIL determination

• Critical need for independence for SIL determination
• What to look out for when considering independence
• Where to look for problems

Dr Alan G. King, ABB

Panel discussion and opportunity to address your questions to the experts

Seminar Chair’s closing remarks