Identifying and Managing Safety Critical Element –Practical Implementation Challenges and Lessons Learned

Safety Critical Equipment (SCE) is often understood as those equipment that need to perform upon demand being put on it. It is imperative that the SCE is available on demand to ensure safety of the plant, people and environment. In order to achieve functionality, close maintenance and performance monitoring standard are applied. In reality, there are practical implementation challenges. These challenges include; a) Identification of equipment as SCE; b) Setting performance standard requirement; c) Regular maintenance to comply with set performance standard; and d) Reporting of anomaly and corrective actions. SCE identification is done in a group setting post Hazard and Operability (HAZOP), followed by Layer of Protection Analysis and Safety Integrity Level (SIL) studies. The equipment tag numbers are identified and consolidated in a SCE register. Once, the SCEs are identified, a careful review is conducted. Interpretation challenges, redundancy design considerations, plant availability for maintenance and criticality is evaluated prior to designating an equipment as SCE within maintenance management system, which in this case was SAP. Challenges also extend in setting performance standard, where operational wear and tear, restrict meeting manufacturer’s recommended performance guarantees. There are also legal consequences under a Safety Case regime, where committed performance standards within a safety case are not practical and hence leading to non-compliance of committed performance standards. Further, operational challenges lead to SCE maintenance along with reporting and corrective actions. This paper goes into the details of the challenges faced during identifying and managing SCE from a practical implementation perspective and hence lessons learned.