Project Objectives and Scope
The objective of this EC supported project is to provide the EU Process and allied industries with a set of Guiding Principles for the achievement of safe industrial processes through a unified approach to the implementation of IEC-61508. These Guiding Principles will accelerate the understanding and facilitate uniform interpretation and implementation of the international functional safety standard 61508, which has IEC basic safety publication status. It has been ratified by the CENELEC Technical Board as a European standard (EN 61508) and will form the basis of any incorporation into EU Directives.

The Guiding Principles will ensure that EU industry exploits as rapidly as possible the benefits that IEC-61508 offers, reducing capital and operational costs of systems, whilst maintaining safety performance and protecting people, environment and assets. They will improve communication, assist regulatory bodies in ensuring that new systems do not introduce new intolerable risks and reduce both assessment time and time to market.

The project will have an impact on all EU member states, including the EU Accession States, helping them in the acceleration of the take-up of the standard, providing a quantum improvement in safety performance and commercial edge.

The project is a truly European project where pan European views are being sought to provide a solution to a European wide issue.

The challenge and primary focus of the project is to optimise and harness the 'hands-on' experiences of organisations and individuals so as to encourage them to describe their implementation experiences to a wider audience in a way which is accessible, uniform, responsive, user friendly and matches the pace of learning to the recipients needs.

This project is supported by the European Community within Framework V - Growth programme.Any material produced as a result of this project does not represent the opinion of the Community, and the Community is not responsible for any use that might be made of data appearing therein.

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Background
Industry continually strives to improve performance and profitability whilst maintaining and improving safety. In addition there is a regulatory and social requirement for safety and reliability. Against this background, industry is experiencing a revolution in the rapidly evolving safety technologies. Whilst it is important to fully exploit this modern technology to facilitate improvements in both safety and economic performance it needs to be undertaken within an overall safety framework. Standards provide this safety framework. In the area of safety, IEC-61508 has been developed and issued by the International Electrotechnical Committee (IEC) and constitutes the very latest international best practice safety standard. The standard has been ratified by the CENELEC Technical Board as a European standard (EN 61508) and will form the basis of any incorporation into EU Directives. It sets out a high level, generic approach for all safety lifecycle activities for systems comprised of electrical and/or electronic and/or programmable electronic systems technologies that are used to perform safety functions. This standard is providing valuable assistance when implementing the requirements of the SEVESO II Directive on the efficiency of safety management systems.

The standard promotes an 'end to end', 'total system' or 'whole life cycle' approach. This unified approach has been adopted in order that a rational and consistent technical policy can be developed for all electrically based safety-related systems. The standard is generically based and applicable to all E/E/PES safety-related systems irrespective of application or sector. It has significantly influenced the development of: -

• Competency schemes for safety practitioners, notably within the UK, the collaborative between the HSE, IEE and BCS to develop a set of competencies for engineers working in the sensitive area of safety-related systems
• Certification schemes. Within the UK, the Conformity Assessment of Safety Systems (CASS) scheme, within Germany the TUV certification scheme, within the USA, schemes operated by FM & UL and within France by INERIS
• Sector standards such as IEC-61511 for the process industries, IEC-61513 for the nuclear sector, IEC-62061 for the machinery sector, prEN-51056 for furnaces and EN-50126/7/8 for rail transportation.

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Outstanding Issues
Many EU organisations have been working to the framework set out within the standard. However, many involved in the safety-related systems arena, whilst wholeheartedly supporting it's adoption, either lack sufficient pragmatic implementation experience or have implementation experience but no means of effectively sharing and comparing this information to the benefit of themselves and that of European industry as a whole.

Failure to share this information will hinder the swift and economically efficient take-up of the standard within Europe. It will place European industry at a severe disadvantage in exploiting the full potential of the standard, hinder market penetration, delay organisations exploiting the standard's key safety principles, technologies, techniques, measures and best practice methods. This will ultimately have an impact on an organisation's profitability, asset effectiveness and safety performance.

Without the Guiding Principles many organisations and indeed industry sectors, will continue to operate in a fragmented and isolated way, unable to share information and experiences in a focussed and co-ordinated manner. This may place them at a severe disadvantage in responding to regulatory and contractual conditions where knowledge of the standard and implementation experience is a pre-requisite.

The Guiding Principles will overcome many of these barriers to the sharing and availability of material as they will be developed as a direct result of a series of European, intensive, facilitated workshops involving representatives from the complete process industry's supply chain, thus providing a more interactive, dynamic and rapid means of capitalising on industry's experiences.