Category: Functional Safety

  • The Norfolk Event is NO Accident

    The Norfolk Event is NO Accident

    This derailment is catastrophic, however its the result of business decisions that took place over years.

  • Safety Instrumented Systems (SIS)

    Safety Instrumented Systems (SIS)

    Here is a very brief description for safety instrumented systems to get you started into functional safety. The IEC defines a Safety Instrumented System (SIS) as “an instrumented system used to implement one or more safety instrumented functions (SIF). A SIS is composed of any combination of sensor(s), logic solver(s), and final element(s)” (IEC 61511 /…

  • Why Functional Safety?

    Why Functional Safety?

    Why is Functional Safety the topic of so many oil and gas companies meetings?  Why is it gaining momentum? and why do people fight it so badly? IEC61511 This is the international standard for functional safety.  In Europe its considered “State of the Art” or the best solution to the problem of designing unsafe plants.…

  • Well Lets get Started

    Well Lets get Started

    I started off my Career at Syntech, Enerflex building custom control panels for various end users mainly in the gas compression business.  After a few months of constructing panels I decided to take matters into my own hands and designed and built my own micro controlled lead lag compressor control panel using Microchips PIC 16F877A…