What Does Verification of Safety
Critical Elements Look Like ?
Sunny Pillay
Mar 2, 2021 7:25:25 AM
Managing risk on a facility requires a clear understanding and verification of:
1. Our significant hazards and their potential consequences
2. The controls in place to help us reduce the likelihood of an undesired outcome
from occurring
3. What assurance we have in place to ensure the controls will work on demand
Controls are generally physical, software or procedural. Physical and software
(automated) controls tend to be more effective than procedural controls that rely on
human action.
For the purpose of this blog, I will refer to Safety Critical Elements (SCE’s) as those
controls that have a physical aspect to them and form part of the plant, as per illustration
below. They are generally designed with integrity and reliability in mind and are
depended on to prevent high consequence process safety incidents or limit their scale. We
need assurance that these controls are suitable and effective.
Ad: Introduction to Bowties E-Learning From
$130 USD
To have confidence in your overall management of SCEs, the following four questions
should be answered:
1. Have all major incident hazards been identified, and have all control measures
been identified to eliminate or minimise the risk, so far as is reasonably
practicable?
2. Have performance standards been established for the SCE’s?
3. Is the design adequate i.e., in line with industry standard and/or code
requirements?
4. Will the SCE remain suitable throughout the lifetime of the facility?
In line with guidance in industry or published by regulators, many Operators I have come
across have their SCE verification arrangements well documented and achievable relative
the resources available to them. There are however still variations in understanding and
interpretation of this guidance in and across industry, and not all Operators have a
multitude of resources available to them to achieve these requirements. For those that are
still in the process of achieving this, the most appropriate place to start is to develop a
plan for verification based on the activities illustrated below:
If your plan covers all of the above areas, allows for independent, competent, and
experienced people to perform the above verification tasks, and is embedded within
your Management Systems, you are well placed to manage high consequence process
safety risks on your site.
Download our SCE Verification Checklist for more information on how to approach this
important topic
