Safety in the Process Industries

Guiding Principles to the Implementation of IEC-61508

Polish Safety Community plans for EU accession – SIPI contribution embraced
Feb 04

At the Gdansk University of Technology (GUT) a two days seminar was held on 27-28 November 2004 entitled “Integrated Risk Management in the region and the role of insurance”. More than 50 representatives of co-operating companies and institutions interested the safety (or crisis) management and participants from several faculties of GUT took part in this conference.

In one session, on the first day of conference, a concept of regional Centre for Risk Analysis and Safety Management (CENTARiZB) to be created at GUT was discussed. Relevant project could be supported from the structural funds (ERDF), available after formal accession of Poland to EC. During the second day of this conference on “Functional safety and insurance of technical systems” the Committee for Functional Safety (KBF) was created to support in Poland the process of implementing the international standards IEC/EN 61508 and IEC 61511 in industrial practice.

Kazimierz Kosmowski, D.Sc., representing Polish Safety and Reliability Association and GUT, was elected to take the lead of KBF. He presented a programme of KBF activities for 2004 that includes a technical meetings at hazardous industrial plants and organising a scientific / technical conference in September.

To delegates from the industry who took part in this conference the training courses will be offered on selected topics. The certificates of competence will be provided to participants of these courses.

One of the objectives of this conference, to be held in days of formal accession of Poland to European Union, is to bring closer to managers and engineers the European legal and standardisation system. During this conference a workshop on functional safety is planned to discuss results of the SIPI project and how to implement effectively the guiding principles related to IEC/EN 61508 in industrial practice.

A follow-on meeting from the SIPI Gdynia workshop in May 2003 - attended by representatives from Gdansk Polytechnic, PTBN, CIOP, Orlen Refinery, Lotos Refinery, Moore-Siemens, Hima and assurance firm PZU - has resulted in a new local body being established, to be named "The Committee of Functional Safety", to help spread knowledge regarding Functional Safety by organizing training courses and conferences for industrial and engineering organisations. This is one of a number of successful propagations that the EC-funded SIPI61508 project has made, where the initial effort made by the project team has resulted in a more long-term collaboration of interested organisations and individuals.