Why Is Alarm Rationalization Needed?
When you walk into a control room, you typically experience one of two scenarios: (1) operators are busy, alarms are sounding in the background and the alarms receive little attention or (2) operators are busy, alarms are not sounding in the background and alarms receive immediate attention upon activation. One of these control rooms has probably been on the receiving end of an alarm rationalization project.
Alarm rationalization is a key component of a facility’s alarm management lifecycle. Alarm rationalization is the formal activity of identifying critical alarms that need to be managed and then performing the following tasks for each:
- Assessing alarms against established alarm management protocols and philosophies;
- Designing alarms in compliance with established alarm management protocols and philosophies; and
- Developing alarm-response documents that detail alarm rationale, response actions and other relevant information for effective operator intervention.
Why Use Our Alarm Rationalization Process?
Cognascents engineers and facilitators can lead a team of facility personnel to scope and execute an alarm rationalization project. Team members normally consist of process engineers, operators, control engineers, process safety representatives, and maintenance and reliability representatives.
Our alarm rationalization process reduces the number of nuisance alarms and affords effective operator response to legitimate critical alarms. This credit trickles down into a facility’s risk profile by impacting process hazard analyses with respect to human response. It is possible to afford independent protection layer (IPL) credit for operator response to an alarm if an alarm rationalization effort has been conducted. IPL credit for a human often translates into reduced operating, maintenance and process safety costs by not requiring a safety integrated function (SIF) that needs to be inspected, tested, and periodically repaired or replaced.
