SHE Seminar: Functional Safety in Process Safety & NID Prevention Strategies

Topic 1: What SHE-practitioners Need to Know about Functional Safety and its roles in Process Safety – Link

Plant owners/ Operators of MHIs in the Safety Case Regime are required to identify major accident hazards in their installations and put in place operational and management measures to reduce risk and ensure safe operations.

For the process industry, the Safety Instrumented System (SIS) is a critical preventative barrier contributing to this objective. 

In comparison with other protection layers, the Safety Instrumented layer invariably is tasked with a higher risk reduction responsibility (for instance, a SIL2 Safety instrumented function offers a risk reduction factor of 100 minimum, a SIL3 safety function minimum 1000 etc.).

In order to assure continued risk reduction for safe operation of process plants, it is necessary to maintain the Safety Integrity of the SIS protection layer over the operating life of the installation.

To achieve and sustain the required safety integrity, Safety Instrumented Systems for the process industry are required to be designed, built, installed, validated and thereafter operated and maintained in accordance with the requirements of Functional Safety standards viz. IEC 61511/ 61508.

This presentation will discuss those essential aspects which SHE practitioners must be aware of to manage the Functional Safety lifecycle according to these requirements.

Speaker Profile: Mr Sujith PANIKKAR

Sujith has a Master’s Degree in Safety, Health and Environmental Technology from National University of Singapore, a Bachelors in Applied Electronics; Instrumentation Engineering from the University of Kerala, India and is a Certified Functional Safety Expert from TÜV Rheinland (SIS – 170/ 11), TÜV SÜD and CFSE Board, USA.

Having joined HIMA Asia Pacific in 2017, he is currently based in Brisbane as a Principal Consultant & Trainer for Functional Safety & Security. He has 34 years of experience in the field of industrial automation systems & products for Oil&Gas, Petroleum Refining, and LNG, downstream petrochemicals industry projects including Distributed Control Systems, Foundation Fieldbus and Safety Instrumented Systems and intrinsically safe hazardous area interfaces.

He is also an accredited trainer for TUV Rheinland FS Engineer (SIS) certification program for HIMA Asia Pacific as well as an adjunct lecturer at NUS.

Topic 2: Essence of a Prevention Plan for Noise-induced Deafness in Singapore – Link

In Singapore, the leading Occupational Disease was Noise-induced Deafness (NID);2024 statistics. An overview on a prevention plan to address NID with key elements such as noise monitoring, noise control, provision of hearing protectors, training and audiometry.

Speaker Profile: Er Veronica CHOW Li Yee

WSH expert with two decades of regulatory and compliance experience at Occupational Safety and Health Division, Ministry of Manpower (MOM), Singapore as a Senior Assistant Director. Veronica spearheaded the national globally harmonized system (GHS) Task Force. She was an Operation Director with a consulting company providing WSH solutions to and building WSH capabilities. Currently, she is pursuing her passion on training and educating the future generation of WSH professionals. Her past participation as an international speaker, associate lecturer, WSH trainer and facilitator at various forums on WSH topics; legislation, Risk Management, Chemical Safety and Industrial Hygiene allowed her knowledge and skills to be share to the WSH fraternity. She is an associate lecturer and consultant at various institute of higher learning such as NUS, UON and SP.