Summary
This course provides an awareness and basic understanding of LOPA.
Regulations today ask industry to manage risk by assessing the risk and taking appropriate action.
Layer of Protection Analysis is a method of risk assessment which is used to carry out SIL determination to comply with the IEC 61508 / 61511 Functional Safety standards, but is increasingly used early in the design process to assess whether further risk reduction is required.
LOPA is a tool that can be calibrated at the time of use to allow assessment of the risk reduction required to give a tolerable level of risk.
Inappropriate use and application of LOPA can adversely affect the integrity of layers of protection specified. Either resulting in insufficient risk reduction or over specification, leading to unnecessary spend in capital and operational budgets.
The course
On completion of the course, you should be able to:
- Carry out a risk assessment using LOPA and appreciate the potential pitfalls
- Understand its application in SIL determination
Course content:
- A one-day technical course aimed at responsible managers and engineers
- Basic risk assessment concepts and criteria, risk aversion, tolerability including an exercise
- Hazard identification, assessing frequency and consequence
- Identifying initiating causes and Independent Layers of Protection (IPLs)
- LOPA use with several practical exercise examples
- The impact of humans in the equation
- Selection and application of data within a LOPA
- Illustration of importance of IPLs
