In April we held our first technology evening of 2008. Our speaker for the evening was Dick Perry of Fluor presenting an overview of effective alarm management and the status of the draft ISA 18.02 titled Management of Alarm Systems for the Process Industries. Dick explained the characteristics of a good alarm system, the content of range, alarm and trip (RAT) lists, alarm management covering alarm types, alarm classes, alarm priorities, guidelines on alarm priority ratios, types of alarm suppression and the alarm key performance indicators. He then illustrated the cost of incidents directly attributable to alarm failures such as the Buncefield and BP Texas City disasters. BP Texas City received 4000 lawsuits following its accident. Thanks to Dick for a very informative presentation and Fluor for sponsoring the snacks and refreshments.
Golf enthusiasts – we have an event at the Kempton Park Country Club on 4 July. Bookings are already moving along at a fast pace, please contact Debbie Scott on wnip@iafrica.co.za or call her on +27 (0)11 318 1181.
We recently enjoyed a visit to the Komati Power Station outside Bethal, Ntombi Magwaza and Piet van Rensburg were our Eskom hosts for the day. The Power Station manager, Anil Bhawanideen, gave us an execellent presentation on the return to service programme the power station is undergoing after having been mothballed for 15 years. A big thank you for the various sponsorships received Steve Clark of Metso Automation, Rainer Holtz of WIKA, Dave Moon, Lindy Lasper and Mira Jurgens of Metso Minerals.
Our guest speaker in May, Johan Maartens, is the SOX Compliance Manager at Siemens Business Services in Midrand. There has been a huge ripple running through the six Councils falling under the Built Environment, ECSA being one of them. The Council for the Built Environment (CBE) who was supposed to administer these Councils, never got off the ground, and now the Dept. of Public Works is in the process of creating a Governmental Big Brother to fill the void and basically strip all the Councils of their authority. This is going to affect all of us. Johan serves on the SAIMC Council and the Council sub-committee tasked with interfacing with ECSA and handling our Continued Professional Development (CPD) point’s issues. Johan has attended all the urgent meetings held these last three months on behalf of the SAIMC and is able to give us the feedback we need. The Engineering Act 46 of 2000 still requires all of us to register, the above notwithstanding.
The speaker for the next Technology Evening on 11 June 2008 will be Ron Smith, Alpret Control Specialists' product manager, and his subjects will be Wireless Technology, Wireless Security and Wireless Networking.
Direct any queries to Bill Steenberg on bill.steenberg@fluor.com or 083 949 8104.
| Tel: | +27 11 312 2445 |
| Email: | ina@saimc.co.za |
| www: | www.saimc.co.za |
| Articles: | More information and articles about SAIMC |
© Technews Publishing (Pty) Ltd | All Rights Reserved
printer friendly version