Functional Safety

Functional safety refers to the concept of ensuring that a system or equipment operates in a safe manner, particularly when it comes to managing hazards and preventing accidents that could result in harm to people, damage to the environment, or loss of assets.

Benchmark Consulting Engineering L.L.C provide specialized services for Functional Safety that involve conducting the following:

Safety Integrity Level (SIL):

Identification is a crucial step in functional safety management that assists in establish a design that is suitable for its intended purpose, specifically for safety measures that involve instrumentation. The objective is to create measures that effectively reduce hazards in terms of safety, environmental impact, and economic losses. SIL determination is carried out to assign safety functions to protective layers, identify the necessary safety instrumented functions, and determine the appropriate safety integrity level for each of these functions.

Safety Requirements Specification (SRS):

involves defining the safe operational state for each identified safety instrumented function. This includes identifying potential demand sources and their frequency, setting proof-test intervals, specifying response times for bringing the system to a safe state, determining safety integrity levels, and selecting the mode of operation (demand/continuous). Additionally, it includes detailing process measurements and trip points, specifying requirements for triggering a trip through energizing or de-energizing, outlining system reset procedures after shutdown, and establishing the maximum allowable spurious trip rate. These activities adhere to the guidelines specified in the IEC 61511 standard..

SIL Assessment

is a critical step in the conceptual design phase of a Safety Instrumented Function (SIF) involves identifying the SIF subsystem following the preparation of the Software Requirements Specification (SRS) via a SIL Assessment process. Subsequently, the SIF design undergoes verification to confirm its compliance with functional and integrity requirements

SIL Validation and Verification:

objective is to validate, through inspections and testing, that the installed and operational safety instrumented system, along with its associated safety functions, complies with the requirements specified in the safety requirement specification.

Layer of Protection Analysis (LOPA) :

is utilized to assess and quantify the risk associated with a specific hazardous event or scenario. It is a widely used technique in process safety management aimed at evaluating the adequacy of existing safeguards and identifying additional protective measures required to mitigate risks to an acceptable level.