Functional Safety, Alarm and Hazardous Area Management Lead for TÜV Rheinland, Suresh Sugavanam, will be providing an insight into where Process Safety encounters Machinery Safety for Hazardex Live 2025 delegates.

Within process industries, there is a common ambiguity when risks are being assessed such that, risks related to the process may be included as part of the review and the relevant IEC 51511 risk assessment process would be applied, whereas, for any process that involves the use of a machinery, the risks are assumed to be assessed against the machinery safety standard and not part of the process safety standard. Process engineers consider such process with machinery to be outside the boundaries of process risk assessments, and vice versa with the machinery engineers. Therefore, in many cases there is a risk of negation of risk assessments for these processes.

Organisations that are part of the supply chain constituting a safety related system are mandated to comply with the respective international Functional Safety Standards for process safety and machinery safety such as IEC 61508, IEC 61511, IEC 62061, ISO 13849 and IEC 12100. These standards ensure that the activities and the outcome of the specific phases of the functional safety lifecycle comply with all the requirements.

This paper will specify the requirements from both the process safety and machinery safety for compliance and will provide the recommended methodologies for the appropriate standards to be followed when both applications have both process and machinery safety solutions to be implemented.

About the author:

Suresh Sugavanam is the Functional Safety, Alarm and Hazardous Area Management Lead for TÜV Rheinland Industrial Services and is an approved TÜV Rheinland Expert in Functional Safety & Cyber Security. He is a member of The IET, BSI GEL 65 standards committees (for IEC 61508 MT, IEC 61511 MT & IEC 62443) with over 25 years of experience in the provision of Functional Safety & Cyber Security Consultancy, as well in provision of consultancy solutions for Automation Projects for the Process Industries. In his current role, Suresh is responsible for managing the consultancy & training solutions for Functional Safety & Security Management, Alarm Management and Hazardous Area Management businesses for TÜV Rheinland customers worldwide.