Alarm Management
Effective warning systems are a vital part of every industrial process. The integrity of such systems is impaired by standing alarms and nuisance alarms, meaning a system can be rendered completely ineffective by an alarm flood during a process disruption, exactly at a time when the system is needed most.
Most process plants have far too many alarms. This results in numerous standing, repeating and nuisance alarms, in addition to ‘alarm avalanches’ under plant-upset conditions. Poor alarm performance has been identified as a significant contributory cause of many serious incidents including an explosion at a Texaco refinery in 1994, the Channel Tunnel fire and the Three Mile Island incident.
Our alarm rationalisation methodology, Alarm+ was developed with Shell Expro as part of that company’s response to the EEMUA guidelines for alarm systems and the IEC-61508 standard for instrumented protective systems. It is consistent with both standards and has the added benefit of providing an effective way of dealing with the large numbers of alarms that often need to be reviewed.
The methodology can be applied to both existing and new plant projects and can result in unplanned maintenance costs being reduced by up to 15% within 6 months, accompanied by a reduction of up to 30% in risk operation insurance.
