A prior blog on the Kenexis web site related to the requirements for tight-shutoff (TSO) for valves that are part of a safety instrumented function generated a lot of interest in the engineering community. A link to that blog is shown below. Tight Shutoff Requirements in SRS Blog After writing that blog, Kenexis routinely received [...]
This week, someone attempted to penetrate our systems again. Many of these type of attempts are blast to thousands and some our targeted attempts. Regardless, clicking almost always mean you have been compromised and malware is now on your computer and moving through your organization. This particular email attempt had a file attached from Dropbox and the [...]
Kenexis has accepted an invitation to speak at the China Chemical Safety Association 5th Workshop on Risk Control and Hidden Danger Management of the Chemical Industry. The speaker will be President and CEO, Ed Marszal. Mr. Marszal will be presenting, "A History of LOPA". This presentation will give a personal perspective of how the LOPA [...]
When performing fire and gas mapping utilizing geographic coverage techniques, one needs to define the extents of the area of concern. This process allows the analyst to define the actual area that must be covered by the fire detectors or the gas detectors. This is only important for geographic coverage methods because geographic methods do [...]
In the past few years, the use of quantitative risk analysis tools to determine the required number of location of gas detectors has gotten more attention in the literature and also in real world project execution. While there is great interest in these performance based methods, often referred to as fire and gas mapping, there [...]
There have been times when customers have asked whether or not our Effigy fire and gas mapping software is capable of modeling in 2D instead of 3D. The rationale for the request is that the customer does not have 3D models for their facility, but would still like to have an analysis performed. All of the [...]
As a consultant, I travel on a regular basis. When I travel, I usually have multiple devices with me: a personal phone, a work phone, one or more computer, test equipment, and other devices. All of these are power hungry, especially the phones. It is tempting to charge them anywhere I can, but as a [...]
We have been presenting and hosting classes in the Kenexis – Houston Training Center. Kenexis is finishing up the remodeling of their offices in Houston to improve the training center experience. Classes are scheduled for industrial automation, process and cyber security training courses. Our office in just south of I10 in the Energy Corridor just [...]
A customer noted that some operating companies limit the extension of their test intervals so that the test interval is at least half of the expected demand rate. For instance, if a safety instrumented function (SIF) is intended to prevent against a hazard whose initiating event rate is once in ten years, then the test interval [...]
I received this customer question that is common enough that I thought that I would publish the answer in a blog... >> Have you seen others in the petrochemical industry using analytical measurements (combustibles, CO, O2) of flue gas to shut down fired heaters? Yes >> Many of our PHAs are identifying unburned fuel in [...]
Kenexis is pleased to announce our newest business partner, Shevat Engineering and Training in Campinas, Brazil. Shevat partnership extends Kenexis services and engineering tools to the South American markets including Brazil, Argentina, and Chile. We are pleased to announce this relationship that signals the start of an exciting time for Kenexis in [...]
The China University of Petroleum and Kenexis has signed licensing agreements that will allow the university to utilize Kenexis software and Kenexis training materials in the gradudate and undergraduate curricula for the Department of Safety Science and Engineering of the College of Mechanical Engineering. In keeping with Kenexis' policy of giving back to the engineering [...]
Kenexis President and CEO Ed Marszal will be providing a keynote presentation at the 4th China Center for Chemical Process Safety Conference in Qingdao China, Thursday June 2. Mr. Marszal will be presented a lecture entitled "Gas Detector Coverage Calculation Using Gaussian Dispersion Models". This presentation will focus on the use of scenario coverage for [...]
I was reading an article on the wire this morning about a nuclear power plant in Germany potentially compromised by cybersecurity problems. In the article, it was revealed that the infected system or culprit, was an old HMI station for moving control rods that was last updated in 2008. While this might escape discovery in [...]
You may not have noticed some of the changes to the Kenexis website. It is now converted to new web technologies making it much easier to use on your smart phone, tablet or computer. Another usability enhancement was the addition of translation services provided by Microsoft Bing. This enables you to read many of [...]
We have developed the Effigy (Fire & Gas Detector Mapping) and Vertigo (SIS Lifecycle Management) software tools in Kenexis Instrumented Safeguard Suite to support language switching through your browser. While we still have work to do to translate the help files, the application is already translated into Chinese and Portuguese. This is done through the [...]
Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, USA (03 March 2016) –The International Society of Automation (ISA) announced today that Kenexis, an independent engineering consulting firm providing technical safety and industrial cybersecurity services, is an ISA Promotional Partner. Through the partnership, Kenexis and ISA will work together to share Kenexis’ capabilities and technical knowledge with ISA members and customers. [...]
This month, Kenexis met with various entities in China to discuss upcoming challenges in functional safety. This is an ongoing effort to work with the Chinese in their efforts to build safe work environments in the chemical and oil and gas industries. While there, Ed Marszal (president) presented at the China University of Petroleum as a guest [...]
With the relatively new and growing interest in design of Fire & Gas systems using computer-aided mapping for detector placement, these software tools are rapidly evolving. Full disclosure here; Kenexis develops and licenses a very good software tool called Effigy™ for Fire & Gas Mapping, which is a component of the Kenexis Integrated Safeguard Suite. [...]
Join Kenexis at the 2015 ISA Houston Section Expo & Chili Cook Off next month on Thursday November 12, 2015 form 5-9pm. Come by and visit us! RSVP
Please join us for the ISA Houston Section Monthly Meeting on Wednesday November 4, 2015 from 11am-1pm HESS Club 5430 Westheimer Rd. Houston, Texas 77056 Process Industry Accidents – Lessons Learned the Hard Way and How to Avoid Them Using a collection of videos, photographs and stories, this presentation will cover lessons learned from a [...]
Kenexis will be presenting several papers at this conference on process safety and industrial cyber security. Come meet us at our booth, or let me know ahead of time and we will setup an opportunity to talk. Seven ISA Divisions are Teaming up in November 2015 2015 Process Control and Safety Symposium-Sponsored by Process Measurement [...]
On June 8, 2015, OSHA issued a formal Letter of Interpretation regarding the application of Recognized and Generally Accepted Good Engineering Practices (RAGAGEP) to the Process Safety Management (PSM) Standard 29 CFR 1910.119. The requirements to comply with RAGAGEP are located in subpart (d) Process Safety Information and subpart (j) Mechanical Integrity. The new information [...]
Designers of fire and gas systems have long struggled with the question of how many detectors are required and where those detectors should be located. Historically, decisions about the number and location of detectors were made based on heuristics, expert judgement, or rule-of-thumb. The first step forward in gas detector placement came in 1992 with [...]
SPRING-BASED CYBERSECURITY for SCADA, PLC, and all other Industrial Control Systems in Process Plants & Manufacturing The Problem We have become very comfortable using advanced controller technology and in some cases, we are not thinking through the potential problems the technology might cause. Just this week, a news story [1] surfaced where white-hat hackers (good guys) were [...]
