1. Lifecycle Management Sustainable Safety requires a comprehensive process to implement and manage the safety lifecycle of the asset. IPS has skilled specialists to specify, verify, validate and commission system designs. IPS offers a full set of lifecycle services that follow a continuous process to manage change and ensure the systems are always operating in accordance with the original design criteria. Our electronic document management services utilize wireless technology to provide system and procedural documentation on demand while ensuring the information is always current. We have skilled specialists who can help to design solutions, which have proven to reduce unplanned outages by 95%.
2. Safety Instrumented System Fundamental to the success of a Sustainable Safety culture is the Safety Instrumented System (SIS) that performs the critical safety functions such as Emergency Shut Down (ESD), Fire and Gas protection (F&G), Burner Management (BMS) and High Integrity Protection (HIPS), as well as critical control functions such as Turbo Machinery Control (TMC). IPS Triconex has the largest SIS installed base with over 800 million hours of safe operation and our InFusion technology interfaces to all major SIS equipment, allowing for integration of traditionally disparate systems into a single safety domain. Our approach maintains the operational independence and integrity of the safety system while allowing the plant-wide integration of critical information.
3. Instrumentation Safety enabled field devices and instruments that are more intelligent are reducing the need to send people to the field. This keeps personnel away from dangerous locations, removes human error and reduces the cost of maintenance. IPS, a leading supplier of field devices, has a broad range of safety instrumentation to monitor the entire loop from sensor to actuator. Maintenance operations can schedule and conduct non-disruptive partial stroke testing within the tightest confines of plant operations. Test logs document compliance against internal and external benchmarks. Advanced diagnostics facilitate trip prevention and communicate maintenance alerts. Our TüV certified transmitters and valve positioners are designed to IEC61508 for use in safety critical applications.
4. Diagnostic Monitoring Confidence in the operational effectiveness and the correct functioning of the installed safety systems is essential to a successful Sustainable Safety program. Using the embedded automatic diagnostic features of the safety systems, instrumentation and control elements increase this confidence and allow plant personnel to focus on production. IPS uses data derived from the testing and diagnosis framework to automatically identify the appropriate communication strategies and coordinates the interaction of the personnel communications, asset management and maintenance functions.
5. Loop Management The integrity and effectiveness of each Safety Instrumented Function (SIF) is paramount to the safety of the asset. IPS experts provide ‘offline’ services for the design of each SIF, including device selection, SIF calculations and SIF validation. Once the SIF is operational, our online loop SIL monitor provides dynamic feedback on the performance of the SIF to demonstrate that it is operating in accordance with the design parameters.
6. Inhibit & Bypass Management In order to highlight significant deviations from the normal operational state and adjust the online plant safety case, a robust management system is required to monitor, record and report the status on all inhibit events and override conditions. This allows for handover shift reports and KPIs to detect patterns and trends, as well as status reports identifying and explaining the application of a bypass. It also enables automatic removal of specified bypasses after a configurable period and advises when the plant achieves a steady operational state. The IPS Inhibit & Bypass Management function communicates with all electronic systems, facilitates the systematic recording of events from other systems and provides a formal rule based interpretation of the overall plant inhibit condition to initiate reports and display the operational status of the plant emergency systems.
7. Alarm Management Alarms are often the first layer of protection and provide the first indication that there is a potential unsafe condition on the site. Too many process alarms diminish the integrity of the alerts and the effectiveness of the operator response. Sustainable Safety programs utilize an effective and efficient alarm management system that promotes both safety and performance. Alarm rationalization based on industry standards applies layers of protection to link the alarm priority with the time required to effectively respond to an alarm before the plant shuts down. This results in a reduction in nuisance trips, allowing operators to take action on every alarm.
8. Asset Management Asset management extends to all the critical assets and processes within the environment that contribute to the performance of the plant and ultimately to the performance of the business. Specifically, the Sustainable Safety program data collected from the Asset Management system is integrated into the overall plant safety view. This allows the safety envelope model to be modified and the plant safety dashboard to be updated to give a real-time measure of the overall integrity of the plant. The IPS Enterprise Asset Management solution integrates Condition Management (CM), Computerized Maintenance Management System (CMMS), Condition Based Maintenance (CBM) and Reliability Centered models for Operations and Maintenance (RCO/RCM). This suite of software and services goes beyond traditional asset management and provides the relevant asset intelligence required for planned maintenance.
9. Mobile Solutions A fundamental challenge in managing the safe operations of any production enterprise is the ability to traceably manage human activity within the physical operation. Mobile solutions combines state-of-the-art wireless technology with a managed workflow that validates and tracks that human based activities have been carried out, ensuring procedural integrity with traceability. When combined as part of a sustainable safety program, regulatory procedures, inspections and other activities can be logged and incorporated as a holistic safety strategy. Whilst traditional control systems and safety designs anticipate identified hazards, statistically, human error has been attributed as the common cause for many catastrophic events. The mobile solution suite addresses this challenge guarantying procedural integrity for human activity and serves to close the loop around many "stranded" assets that are not intrinsically monitored by traditional systems.
10. Asset Simulation Robust simulation and modeling tools are used to verify and validate the design and any changes prior to the implementation on a live plant. This ‘check’ helps confirm that the safety system mitigates the risks it was designed for while ensuring the solution is fit for purpose and economically viable. IPS offers a comprehensive suite of modeling tools ranging from predictive control to online optimization. These tools help you improve your process profitability by enhancing quality, increasing throughput and reducing energy usage and waste.
11. Operator Training Sustainable Safety is focused on removing human error or people from the process and potentially hazardous situations. This requires enhancing the skills and competency of the people who operate the plant to respond to stresses and situations. Similar to training a pilot, safety simulation can run "what if" scenarios and testing to train operators how to effectively respond in alarmed conditions. IPS offers operator training simulators that emulate the plant environment, linking process simulation models with physical-spatial models to create virtually any scenario that a user could encounter in real life. Our Immersive Virtual Reality Process technology can create a three-dimensional computer-generated representation of either a real or proposed process plant. Via a stereoscopic headset, users enter a totally immersive environment in which they can move through the plant in any direction. The ability to simulate complex processes in connection with virtual actions allows the user to directly experience an environment that changes over time, making it more effective at transferring skills learned in training to the work environment.
12. Personnel Location The personnel location system is a vital part of plant emergency training allowing simulation of unsafe events at any part of the plant and monitoring the personnel response to optimize the safety training procedures. Using an integrated personnel detection and alert system as part of the plant Sustainable Safety program greatly reduces the impact of any plant incident because you have real-time knowledge of personnel and a valid rules-based response to any critical situation. IPS wireless solutions provide the direct link between the automatic process safety systems and the operation personnel. The platform allows tracking and communication with all personnel anywhere on site.
13. Real-Time Safety View Having a collaborative virtual environment enables a global network to share information, expertise and knowledge for a Sustainable Safety culture. It requires an integrated approach to provide real-time situational awareness and enterprise wide visibility to minimise business disruptions due to an incident, reduced security threats and improved emergency response resolution times. IPS offers remote access to a real-time Safety View for an overview of the plant to show how safely the plant is operating. A contextual display is created by splitting the plant into safety zones by plant assets and applying a color indication of coverage and risk levels. High level as well as detailed information help determine what area and what safety instrumented function is compromised and whether the asset can be restored into a safe operating state. Because this information is available visually and remotely, it is possible to take the information to the experts rather than vice versa, resulting in safer, more targeted event response.
14. Security Now, more than ever, the threat to the safe operation of a plant can no longer be contained solely within the operation, as the threat from external influence increases. The realities of terrorism and business disruption due to plant safety incidents are critical considerations for plant managers. IPS solutions embrace a ‘defense in depth’ philosophy that applies multiple layers of cyber security to protect against viruses, worms, other forms of malicious attack and physical security (such as fences, barricades, guards and other methods used to deter unwanted physical entry). As all of these systems become integrated into a single ‘safety domain’, the impact of a malicious attack significantly increases if the attack is successful. Sustainable safety assurance incorporates awareness, assessment, policies and procedures as well as intrusion detection and prevention systems in a comprehensive security solution.