Introduction to Alarm Management

Course Content:

• Introduction to Alarm Management
• The 7 step process for effectively and efficiently addressing alarm system problems
• ANSI/ISA-18.2 / IEC62682 standards on alarm management – Why there are two standards, content of the standards, regulatory implications for existing systems, the Life Cycle approach, mandatory and recommended elements, concepts, and clarifications
• Developing a comprehensive alarm philosophy
• Alarm analysis: baseline and benchmarking
• Alarm bad actor resolution
• Alarm documentation and rationalisation, including cost-effective staged approaches
• Alarm audit and enforcement
• Advanced, real-time alarm management techniques
• Management of change of an alarm system
• Justifying alarm management projects

Alarm systems have developed over the last decade from hard-wired indicators which were costly to configure and had limited space, to the cheap and highly configurable SCADA interfaces commonly implemented today. This transition has largely gone unregulated by company standards leading to the blanket implementation of alarms for everything and anything available without fully considering the impact on the operator. The result of this will impact the safety of a process plant through uncontrolled alarm changes and alarm flooding. The objectives of this Alarm Management Training course are to develop the skills necessary to implement a site standard for alarm configuration, to be able to assess the performance of the current alarm system, and to review existing alarms for their relevance. This will teach the participants how to regain control of site alarm systems and how to provide operators with only the relevant information that they require.