Automation systems are mostly delivered and handed over to customers with what appears to be a copious basket of alarms and events.
It turns out, as the plant is commissioned and first product is achieved, we at times find ourselves with operational, process safety or productivity issues as a result of the either the frequency or priority or relevance of alarms and events.
This is where alarm management comes in. It usually takes the form of an alarm rationalisation exercise.
Rules of Thumb:
- The generation of an alarm should elicit an operator to initiate some action or actions to prevent the process from exceeding nominal operation. If an alarm does not meet this criteria, then it should not present a distraction to an operator. This alarm can be either de-activated and / or journalised only.
- The majority of system events could be safely configured to display on the engineering workstation only.
Experience
- Shell FIU bad actors alarm management (enabling of alarm module for generating of automatic reports)
- Built leading alarms on shoreline pipelines and integrated into PI system (PANALARM)
- Helped re-route system alarms from operator workstations to Engineering Workstations (Niquan)
- Identified root cause of nuisance alarm on feedback of FACP door switches for accommodation (Shell DAUP)
- Cashima and Amherstia ARM….co-ordinated alarm configuration dump from QBD and ControlBuilder and cross-referenced with most recent ARM
- Participated in Management of Change exercise to reduce alarm set points to prevent potential Loss of Containment on bp TT Amherstia wells
- Conducted optimisation and rationalisation exercise on bpTT Alarm Response Manual reports on Cashima and Amherstia offshore gas production platforms for bpTT of Trinidad and Tobago.
- AMHERSTIA well alarms had to be modified to reflect changed operating pressure profile and flowline condition
- Mahogany Bravo: alarm flood, txer dropping below zero and generating alarm….lowr clamped to 0 in Experion
- Amherstia: alarm flood caused by deviation between SIS and BPCS txers. Calibration reqd.
- Teak A: nuisance alarm from Level high and low of level control of compressor filter
- Alarm hygiene for Emerson Delta V BCS and SIS on Teak Offshore Crude Oil Treatment plant, and on Wonderware workstations on Teak and Samaan oil and gas production platforms for Repsol Trinidad and Tobago
Let’s Work Together!
Whether your automation system comes with alarm management software or not, it doesn’t matter, as the alarm and systems events can be dumped to either a CSV or text file, which can then be exported to Excel or a third party alarm management software for analysis.
Alarms would be identified, categorised and prioritised according to the standard ISA 18.2, and a plan developed for immediate and on-going action.
