Functional Safety Technician (TÜV Rheinland) Safety Instrumented Systems

Day one — Functional Safety principles and requirements

Build the foundation for understanding the safety function and the responsibilities attached to it.

• Introduction to Functional Safety and IEC 61511; industrial incidents, safety and layers of protection; SIS, SIF and SIL definitions.
• Safety-system failures, random and systematic failures, dangerous undetected failures, diagnostics and proof testing.
• IEC 61508 and IEC 61511 lifecycle concepts; Functional Safety Management, competence, roles and procedures.
• Lifecycle and configuration planning, verification, assessments, audits and documentation; the operational team's responsibilities.
• Hazards and risk, consequences and likelihood, tolerable risk and ALARP; HAZOP, fault tree analysis, risk matrices and risk graphs; security risk assessment considerations.
• Safety-function allocation, LOPA, IPL characteristics, SIF operating modes, SIL requirements and required risk reduction.
• The purpose of the SRS and its 29 specified SIF description items, including sensing, logic and final action, trip conditions, safe state, response time and process safety time, integrity and operating assumptions.
• MTTR and MRT; the requirements and information needed for operation, maintenance and testing.

Day two — SIS engineering, installation and validation

Connect the design with the installed safety function and the evidence needed for operational readiness.

• Review of day-one homework and questions.
• General hardware requirements; sensors, logic solvers and final elements; BPCS and SIS independence and integration challenges.
• Voting arrangements, MooN architecture, HFT, safety versus production availability, diagnostics and proof testing.
• Safety manuals, systematic capability, applicable Route 1H and Route 2H provisions, prior-use and proven-in-use evidence, device selection and hardware failure concepts.
• Testing and maintenance assumptions, proof-test intervals and coverage, and their relationship to the probability of dangerous failure on demand.
• FAT records, installation planning and documentation; commissioning checks, SAT, validation against the SRS, deviations and authorisation for service.

Operation, maintenance and proof testing

Apply controlled working practices to the activities that affect SIS integrity.

• Operation and maintenance plans, procedures and competence; inspection, calibration, fault diagnosis, maintenance, repair and reinstatement.
• Failure logs, discrepancies and recurring failures; recording as-found and as-left conditions and the evidence supporting restoration.
• Bypass and override control: authorisation, risk assessment, compensating measures, status, time limits, records and return to normal operation.
• Proof-test procedures for individual SIFs; interval, coverage and consistency; complete and partial tests, segmented tests, overlapping test boundaries and limitations.
• Testing the sensor and process interface, logic and final element; realistic conditions, acceptance criteria, incomplete or deferred tests, detected failures and investigation.
• Operator and maintenance training; feedback from operating and test records to the responsible engineering team.

Modification and decommissioning

Recognise when an intervention changes a safety requirement or invalidates an existing assumption.

• Management of change; replacement in kind versus modification; device, configuration, range, trip-setting, firmware and application-program changes.
• Modification objectives, impact review and inputs; the importance of FSA Stage 5 before starting a modification.
• Verification, revalidation, updated documentation and authorisation for return to service.
• Decommissioning procedures, hazard analysis, affected SIFs and authorisation; course review and examination preparation.

Practical learning, materials and preparation

Industrial examples and incident discussions support exercises in failure classification, risk reduction, SIL selection, voting and HFT, bypass control, proof testing, restoration and management of change. Course materials include the slide handouts, exercises, homework and abbreviations reference. Allow approximately one to two hours for evening review and homework; the second training day includes a review of the work.