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What is the Safety Life Cycle?

Functional Safety

The so-called Safety Life Cycle (SLC) came into being as a set of best engineering practices. Adopting it reduces development and design times and increases reliability levels. The main aim of all international functional plant safety standards is to address the causes of accidents by implementing a safety management system. This system has to ensure that staff have adequate technical management skills. In engineering terms, this system is known as the Safety Life Cycle (SLC). It is a model designed to optimize design, safety and integrity, minimizing the probability of introducing systematic failures or errors into the system. These errors and failures can be caused by specification, design, construction, installation and commissioning issues, by failed or partial implementation of the requirements, by incomplete processes and procedures or inadequate use of the methods and techniques envisaged for carrying out the various tasks.

The safety life cycle concept has been incorporated into international standards such as ANSI/ISA84, IEC 61508 and IEC 61511. These standards are now widely accepted as a basis for compliance with local, national and international laws and regulations as well as “best engineering practices”. Ultimately, understanding the entire process of an SLC should be a prerequisite for choosing a SIL (Safety Integrity Level) for any safety system.

The safety life-cycle approach requires that first of all a problem be identified and evaluated, and then that a project be developed to solve the problem. Finally, the project is...

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