So he is asked - Who is safe?

Functional Safety is a complex topic frequently pigeon-holed within the domain of safety experts and complex engineering processes. It’s a sad fact that many plant operators view Functional Safety as just another regulatory hurdle that costs money without direct gains in production. However, if Functional Safety is ignored, it has the potential to seriously impact, or even ruin a company. Conversely, if implemented well, it can result in significant productivity gains according to Schneider Electric Critical Controls Solutions Executive Sven Gröne. He will be presenting ‘Functional Safety - Who’s Safe?’ at the ACI Connect event, which is being held in Melbourne on 9-10 April 2014.

“There’s an old saying that if you think safety is expensive, think of what an accident is going to cost you,” says Gröne.

“It’s not just about the fines or penalties, it’s about potential injury to people, loss of plant, damage to environment, and loss of the company’s reputation.

“Take the BP Macondo Prospect oil field incident in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, for example. Apart from the significant environmental damage, it has been estimated to have cost BP about $60 billion and counting*, and this does not include the impact on BP’s share price, which plummeted from $59.48 on April 19, 2010 to $27.02 on June 25, representing a decrease in market capitalisation of around  $101 billion  within 60 days of the incident. While the share price recovered somewhat from this low point, it never fully recovered to pre-incident levels.

“This is certainly an extreme example, but it illustrates how taking too much risk or ignoring safety will eventually catch up with you and has the potential of ruining a company,” says Gröne.

Productivity improvements are no small potato

There are actually a number of commercial as well as soft benefits associated with Functional Safety that are often overlooked. Gröne says that companies with good process safety reported significant direct cost benefits including a 3% reduction in production costs and up to 5% increase in productivity**. Other benefits included up to 5% reduction in maintenance costs and up to 20% reduction in insurance costs.

“There is direct financial benefit to be realised in doing this correctly,” says Gröne.

“If you properly assess risk, mitigate risk and operate in the right ways - you don’t have the accidents; you don’t end up over-engineering the system; and the staff have the right attitude front of mind - identifying potential hazards and bringing them to attention of management and then management can do something about it before a problem occurs.

“A 5% improvement in productivity is no small potato for a major operator; they can regularly spend 10s of millions of dollars chasing 1% improvement.”

Innovation in Functional Safety

When asked what has been the most significant impact or innovation on Functional Safety over the last decade, Gröne says it’s the formalisation and adoption of international standards for Functional Safety. He says having a consistent methodology and adopting the same principles globally has enabled the mobile workforce to do the right thing in terms of managing and mitigating risk with Functional Safety design regardless of where the project is being executed.

“Also, there is a much wider choice of safety solutions providers now, and customers are spoilt for choice,” he says. “This has allowed [customers] to select solutions that are fit for purpose without having to spend a fortune.

“10 or 15 years ago there were only a handful of choices in the safety automation market. Today, just about every major automation vendor has its own safety system offering - so the choice for the customer has grown by an order of magnitude, and the customer’s ability to go ‘fit for purpose’ has increased dramatically.”

With advances in other technologies, the power and functionality of safety solutions have gone very quickly from simple “monitor and trip” functionality  to being user-friendly, sophisticated systems that can perform complex calculations and provide advanced safety control as well as tight integration with the plant distributed control systems.

Future of Functional Safety?

Functional Safety is not just about the design and implement phase, it is about maintaining the design integrity of the safety systems over time. “The key direction you are going to find is the idea of Process Safety,” says Gröne. “How do I maintain my Functional Safety over time? How do I measure the performance of safety system in real time? How do I compare it to the assumptions I made at the design stage? And, if I find there is a discrepancy, what do I do about it? Ultimately, how do I make safety close the loop?

Companies have struggled with the amount of manual engineering effort involved with this concept, with the result that it’s often not done adequately or in a timely fashion. The key roadblock is the lack of an effective mechanism for measuring a system’s actual performance against its original design criteria. But Gröne says his company, Schneider Electric, is working with major players to produce a framework to automate this process so that it can happen in the background and provide visibility of any issues to those who need it, in real time. “Once you take the manual handling factor out, you can start improving your overall process safety performance,” he says.

Who is safe?

Further details on Functional Safety and its benefits will be included in Gröne’s presentation ‘Functional Safety - Who’s Safe?’ on the first day of the upcoming ACI Connect event on Tuesday 9 April.

So he is asked - who is safe? Gröne says: “Functional Safety is about implementing the appropriate amount of risk, and the appropriate amount of risk is what you as an organisation are prepared to carry as you operate. Every operation will be different.

“If it’s done correctly, they are as safe as they have decided they are going to be.”

For further information about the ACI Connect event, visit www.aciconnect.com.au.

*Source: Robert Page PhD - University of Calgary Institute for Sustainable Energy, Environment and Economy, report April 10 , 2012
**Source: Centre for Chemical Process Study