PROCESS SAFETY SERVICES

PAS-SA reviews the current existing Alarm Philosophy and updates it to align with industry best practices

ALARM MANAGEMENT SERVICES

ALARM PHILOSOPHY REVIEW, APPROVAL AND UPDATE

PAS-SA reviews the current existing Alarm Philosophy and updates it to align with industry best practices where required. Once these updates and recommendation have been approved by the client, PAS-SA will then compile a definitive Alarm Philosophy Document which covers items such as:

  • Alarm definition, determination, and selection
  • Design and configuration
  • Rationalisation and priority determination
  • Roles and responsibilities
  • Basic and advanced alarm handling methods
  • Performance monitoring
  • Nuisance alarm resolution
  • Operator response
  • Management of change

ALARM DOCUMENTATION AND RATIONALISATION

Alarm documentation and rationalisation (D&R) is the logical methodology used to determine, prioritise and document alarms. Using the Alarm Philosophy Document as guidance, PAS-SA will facilitate the D&R process. Based on the outcome of the D&R study, PAS-SA will prepare a comprehensive report summarising the findings and the proposed changes. This report is used as the basis for the management of change documents. PAS-SA will also provide the master alarm list which lists  alarm values established during D&R sessions with process operations personnel.

IMPLEMENTATION OF D&R

The current alarm system is compared to the master alarm list. Differences, such as, priority and trip point are highlighted. PAS-SA will then update the current alarm system so that it matches the master alarm list.

BAD ACTOR PROGRAM

PAS-SA provides a service to help clients deal with nuisance alarms in their plant, commonly referred to in industry as “Bad Actors”. A few Bad actors can account for 25% -95% of the total alarm count. Dealing with these bad actors is a quick way to see improvements in the alarm counts for the plant. Working with the client, PAS-SA provides effective solutions to eliminate these bad actors. PAS-SA issues out monthly reports  that details the bad actors picked up, current status identified bad actors and history of previously solved issues.

ALARM MANAGEMENT TRAINING

PAS-SA offers two training courses for Alarm management. The first training course is a basic introduction into alarm management which covers topics such as:

  • The need for alarm management
  • Types of nuisance alarms
  • EEMUA 191 Standard
  • Effective alarm management techniques

In the second alarm management course, students learn advanced alarm mitigation techniques. This course is more practical than the previous course  as students are given their own computers to come up with solutions to their exercises. These techniques will allow them to deal with nuisance alarms in their plants such as:

  • Frequent alarms
  • Chattering alarms
  • Stale alarms
  • Duplicate alarms
  • Consequential alarms

CONTROL LOOP OPTIMISATION

CONTROL LOOP PERFORMANCE REVIEW

PAS-SA will analyse the performance of all of the controllers on site. Using custom metrics, the controllers will then be grouped into categories such as; Good Performance, Average Performance and Poor Performance whilst also taking into consideration the impact of the controller on the overall process.

CONTROL LOOP OPTIMISATION

Poor performing control loops identified in the performance review will be investigated in great detail. PAS-SA will examine individual controllers:

  • Control Narrative
  • Loop redundancy
  • Time in Manual
  • Range and Valve Sizing
  • Stiction and Hysteresis
  • Tuning Parameters

Once the cause of the controller’s poor performance is identified, PAS-SA will then provide the necessary recommendations to improve loop performance.

CONTROL LOOP TRAINING

PAS-SA is pleased to offer a revolutionary, fully interactive control loop training course. This course is designed to engage its participants by encouraging them to interact with items relating to the lesson on screen. For example, when learning about process deadtime, participants can dynamically adjust the actual deadtime of the example to better understand how the control is effected in real-time. This is an extremely powerful visualisation teaching tool that allows participants understand what they are learning more intuitively than seeing a static graph.

This control course aims to teach practical process control techniques that its participants can use to improve controller performance in their own plants. It is a must do course for panel operators, control engineers and anyone else interested in process control.