You would think that the simple word “safety” would be so well understood by now that, …………well……..even a caveman could get it.  Unfortunately, I find we are still struggling to come to a consensus.  If you don’t believe me, attend a trade show, stop by a few booths, and simply ask the person “Is this thing safety rated”?    I’m sure their immediate response will be “of course”.  Follow that up, by asking by whom and to what. 

The problem is that safety spans many industries and many applications.  It may be defined as the condition of being protected against physical, social, spiritual, financial, political, emotional, occupational, psychological, educational or other types or consequences of failure, damage, error, accidents, harm or any other event which could be considered non-desirable depending on what industry or application your working in or around.  Huh?

In the world of process safety, we are typically interested in combining several components/products into a system, and ensuring that this system has the ability to perform a specific operation (i.e shut a valve) during the presence of a pre-defined condition.  We call this functional safety.  In 1999 the IEC 61508; Functional safety of electrical/electronic/programmable electronic safety-related systems was released.  This standard had a significant impact on our market as we could now all agree on the “what” while discussing safety certification. 

What continues to cause confusion however is the by who?  As many might just claim, “My system is TÜV certified”.  Well, heck, there’s a good chance if you took a look at the label on your kids stuffed Teddy Bear, it too might just be TÜV certified.  So let’s be clear. 

TUV is a well known, globally recognized certification agency.  Today, there are three (3) competing TUV agencies, TUV Nord, TUV Sud, and TUV Rhineland, that can be hired to offer product or system certification.  Arguably they all perform the same level of excellence, yet you find some product manufacture claiming their TÜV is better.  I chuckle, as that would be similar to me stating my PA driver’s license was better than my buddy’s from NJ license.  I know a lot of NJ folks that would argue that! 

While TUV has maintained a stronghold on this certification market, they are not alone and most likely will be facing some stiff competition from Exida (Excellence in dependable automation).  Exida is not new to the certification process, and claims to have issued the most IEC 61508 certificates (individual components) in our industry, and will soon be offering full system certification.  

I’m excited as this bit of information can officially count as my first industry scoop!  Overall this should be good for our industry, From now on, the proper response should be “My system is certified to IEC 61508” then you can ask the question by whom.