CFSE Process Industry Safety Preparatory Course

Those wishing to pass the CFSE (Certified Functional Safety Expert) Process Industry Safety exam require knowledge of the following topics:

1. General requirements of IEC61508 and IEC61511
2. Other relevant national and international standards (US EPA RMP, US OSHA PSM, ISA 84.01)
3. Common terms and definitions
   a. Safety, availability and reliability relationships
4. Safety lifecycle concepts and objectives
5. Requirements for management of functional safety
6. General documentation requirements
   a. Change control requirements
   b. Approval requirements, independence of approval
7. Hazard identification, analysis and risk assessment concepts and procedures
   a. ALARP and tolerable risk
   b. Identifying safety functions
8. Consequence analysis concepts
9. Likelihood analysis concepts
10. Safety integrity level (SIL) selection concepts and procedures
    a. Layer of protection analysis (LOPA)
11. Safety requirements specification (SRS) requirements
12. Typical failure modes of equipment used in safety instrumented systems (SIS)
13. Wearout mechanisms of equipment used in SIS
14. SIL verification concepts and procedures
    a. Understanding of different calculation methods and limitations
    b. Understanding of failure rate data and limitations
    c. Understanding of periodic test procedures and effectiveness
15. General design concepts and procedures
16. Detailed design concepts and procedures
17. Installation requirements
18. Safety validation concepts and procedures
19. Management of change (MOC) concepts and procedures
20. De-commissioning concepts and procedures

Many of these topics were covered in prior 5-day courses. This 4-day advanced course will focus on more detailed and realistic examples of hazard and risk analysis, safety integrity level determination, reliability theory, system modeling, system testing and documentation. The fifth day will be devoted to either the actual CFSE exam (only for those who have been approved by the CFSE board to take the exam), or a practice exam to those who have not yet been approved.

Notes:

1.      Taking such a course does not guarantee passing the CFSE exam.

2.      Students must bring calculators capable of scientific notation. Computer modeling will not be utilized for this course.