LOPA Training Course
Abhisam is pleased to announce that its updated LOPA Training Course, is now available online. This is a self-paced course and can be started anytime and completed at your own convenience. Interesting animations & simulations, videos, actual real life scenarios and examples, worksheets, exercises make this one of the best LOPA training courses available anywhere!
LOPA Certification
The Abhisam LOPA Course is the most comprehensive course in the world. It consists of more than 10 modules, each covering an aspect of the LOPA process. After completing them you can take a Self Assessment Test so that you can evaluate your own knowledge of LOPA. It also serves as a mock LOPA Exam, so that you can better prepare for the Abhisam LOPA Certification Exam. After you complete all the LOPA Training modules, you can take the associated exam. On passing, you earn a Certificate of Competency in LOPA, a designation of certified LOPA Professional and an electronic badge that can be added to your LinkedIn profile, as well as other places online to showcase your knowledge and achievement in LOPA. Great to demonstrate to your current and future bosses and colleagues, or potential clients, your credentials! Badges are issued via Badgr and are linked to your Certificate.
What is LOPA? What is it used for?
As you probably know, LOPA stands for Layer of Protection Analysis. This is a technique used in Hazard and Risk Assessment to evaluate scenarios and assess whether the present level of risk is tolerable or not, whether the existing protection layers are adequate or not and whether the risk can be reduced further. It can also be used to design new protection layers if the present ones are insufficient.
An easy way to understand the concept is to see the Swiss cheese LOPA model of Risk.
This is a very sophisticated method and if you are an owner/operator in the process industries (Oil & Gas, Chemicals, Bulk Pharmaceuticals, Power Generation, Metals processing or similar) then you MUST have knowledge of this technique and be aware of how it can be used to evaluate your existing risk profile and if inadequate either reduce it using newer protection layers or by modifying the process itself.
Costs of accidents in the Process Industry versus accidents in other industries
This is because an accident in the process industry costs many more times than an accident in any other industry. Thus an accident with a machine in a discrete parts manufacturing industry may physically affect only the worker who is working with that particular machine. The owner of that machine may be only financially affected to the extent of their liability with respect to providing a machine that conforms to functional safety standards and local laws.
However an accident involving say an oil production platform in the middle of the sea can not only physically affect all the workers & managers working on that platform, but perhaps even those working on nearby platforms. Also the effects of the accident could be severe environmental damage and open the company’s management to expensive liabilities and fines, in addition to reputational damage and an stock price freefall. We have seen incidents of this type in the recent past.
Therefore owners and operators in the process industry must spend adequate resources on learning and training their personnel in techniques such as LOPA.
LOPA for Engineers and Managers working in the Process Industry
If you are an Engineer or a Manager working in the Process Industry, whether directly with owner/operators OR in an Engineering Design company or an EPC company, then this a very useful course for you.
A LOPA Study session is usually a multidisciplinary activity and engineers of all disciplines must be aware and competent in this method. Therefore whether you are a Process Engineer, or a Mechanical Engineer or an Instrument & Control Systems engineer, this is a course that you must take. Of course if you are an EHS Professional or a Safety Engineer, then you must know this subject very well indeed. If you would like to give your career a boost, then qualify as a certified LOPA Professional by taking this course and passing the exam.
LOPA Safety Consultants
There are a lot of companies that provide safety consulting services to the process industries. They should be very competent in carrying out safety studies such as LOPA for their clients. This Abhisam online LOPA training course can help them be very competent in carrying out this work. This course is very useful for independent freelance safety consultants who work on a project basis and do consulting related to Hazard and Risk Assessment using LOPA.
LOPA for Safety Instrumented System vendors
The Abhisam Safety Instrumented Systems course is very popular with many automation and control systems vendors, as well as system integrators, since it covers BPCS as well as SIS in depth. This course does have a module that covers Safety Integrity Level (SIL) and SIL Determination as well as SIL Verification. The SIL Study (SIL Determination) can be carried out using various Hazard and Risk Assessment techniques, including HAZOP, What-If and LOPA. Some of these are covered in the Safety Instrumented Systems course, but at a basic level.
If you are a Safety Instrumented System vendor, then you may find this LOPA Training Course very useful, in order to understand where your system can be an independent protection layer (IPL) and where it cannot be.
LOPA Training Course Pre-requisites
The Abhisam LOPA Training Course is designed to be taken by professionals who have some industrial experience in the process industry. It may not be very useful for people from a non-process industry background. You need not have any qualification in Process Safety, but you must have some work experience in the process industry, in order for you to grasp the concepts and understand the safety cases and scenarios.
