B265 Functional Safety Alignment

Descriptions

Building 265 is one of the highest containment building in the Weybridge site and has been licensed to SAPO CL4 for in vivo work. The building underwent substantial upgrades to the HVAC systems and complete replacement of the effluent treatment plant in 2013 via Interserve projects who appointed WH Partnership as principal contractor. Following recommendations from an HSE inspection for the E C & I and HVAC systems of the ETP 265 on 8/05/13 and the change of ownership of Weybridge facilities from APHA to DEFRA on 1 Oct 2015 a number of actions were raised with regards to the ETPs (specifically B265) and Functional Safety. As a result of these actions, Defra have initiated a site wide program to implement a Functional Safety Management System to ensure compliance of high containment ETPs with IEC 61511. A Hazard and Operability (HAZOP), LOPA and Safety Integrity Level (SIL) verification assessment was conducted on 26 March 2018 for the ETP 265 being the highest category containment facility in Weybridge and potentially containing the highest risk pathogens. There is a need for most of these actions to be closed out in order to reduce the risks to an acceptable tolerance identified using the risk matrix agreed with APHA and to align IEC 61511. The key objective of the project is to close out actions raised from the HAZOP/LOPA/SIL verification studies carried out in March 2018. As the work was carried out in March 2018, only one supplier was considered. The supplier has knowledge and experience of the site. With an alternative supplier, they would have to supply a new set of PLCs and would have to completely re-code everything from scratch. This would consititute a major change to the existing design and would be counter productive due to the costs of hardware and engineering hours already been paid for. At the same time, the whole project would take a lot longer to complete with risks arising on compatibility of exisiting hardware and new PLCs. The need is just for a one off requirement and not to be repeated