Todd Stauffer speaking at May meeting

In our May 16 meeting at Rumsey Todd Stauffer, Director of Alarm Management at Exida, spoke on improving operator response to alarms. The general role of process operators, he said, is to analyze information, diagnose situations, predict outcomes, and take action to deliver value.

Stauffer pointed out that plant designers usually set up multiple layers of protection to avoid adverse incidents. But these industrial incidents typically have multiple independent failures. Using a metaphor of swiss cheese, he noted that the failures represent holes in the various protection barriers. To illustrate, Stauffer described an actual 2009 fire at Caribbean Petroleum Corporation caused by inadequate level control, no high-level alarm, and lack of a tank automatic overfill prevention system.

He continued by discussing the common failure mechanisms that lead to responsive operator errors. Several slides covered the negative effects of nuisance alarms on operator reactions–illustrated by a chemical sump pump example.

Next Stauffer aluded to the ISA-18.2 standard, which covers alarm management practices. Key elements of the standard are:

– Alarm philosophy development
– Alarm rationalization (prioritization and classification)
– Alarm response procedures
– Alarm system design, and
– Monitoring and assessment.

The remainder of the presention provided details on the five sections of the standard in the above list as well as human factors that can lead to process incidents.

For a copy of the presentation slides as a PDF click here.