Safety: Where are the chemical engineers?

The US-based Safety Users Group staged a forum on functional safety in London last week, to highlight issues around the emergence of international standards IEC61508 and IEC 61511 in the process industries. The key points will be covered in detail in the Nov/Dec issue of Process Engineering magazine.

At the event, Ron Bell, a leading figure in the field of control safety standards, expressed concern that the process people attending functional safety courses today are almost invariably control & instrumentation engineers. This, he said, was despite the fact that (the almost, invariably absent) chemical engineers make the biggest input into SIL (Safety Integrity Level) and hazard & risk analyses at process plants.

Yet again, it seems that chemical engineers are not taking or, more likely, not being afforded the opportunity to contribute on issues of critical importance to their organisations.

Please email your views on this issue, or any other aspect of Process Engineering to: patrick.raleigh@centaur.co.uk

Your feedback is much appreciated,

Patrick Raleigh

Editor

Process Engineering